Energy data

Wind and Prices This Week

Contents

Wind and prices, day by day

Wind is the largest single thing that moves the price of electricity in Great Britain from one day to the next. When it blows hard, wind displaces the gas plant that would otherwise be setting the price, and the wholesale market falls. When it drops, gas comes back and the price goes with it.

This page puts the week’s wind forecast next to the half-hourly prices that have actually been published — not a modelled price, and not a forecast drawn further than the publisher issued it.

The week ahead

Three forecasts of three different lengths. Transmission wind runs 3 days ahead, the embedded wind and solar outlook covers the whole week, and half-hourly prices are published only to Fri 23:00. Empty cells below are the end of a forecast, not a still, dark week.

Day	Wind	Mean	Embedded	Solar peak	Agile price
Thursday 6 Augpart day only		2.8 GW	0.8 GW	4.7 GW	29.49p23.79p–37.23p
Friday 7 Aug		7.1 GW	1.3 GW	9.0 GW	21.28p12.17p–37.74p
Saturday 8 Augpart day only		9.4 GW	1.7 GW	13.0 GW	not published
Sunday 9 Aug	beyond the forecast	—	1.2 GW	12.6 GW	not published
Monday 10 Aug	beyond the forecast	—	1.0 GW	11.8 GW	not published
Tuesday 11 Aug	beyond the forecast	—	0.6 GW	12.0 GW	not published
Wednesday 12 Aug	beyond the forecast	—	1.2 GW	10.8 GW	not published
Thursday 13 Aug	beyond the forecast	—	1.0 GW	10.2 GW	not published

“Mean” is transmission-connected wind, the ten to eighteen gigawatts the system operator dispatches. “Embedded” is the wind on distribution networks, which the operator sees only as demand it does not have to meet — they are separate measurements and are never added here unless both are published for the same half hour. The wind forecast is published hourly and each figure covers its whole hour.

Does windy actually mean cheap?

Across the 60 half hours that have both, the windiest third averaged 24.28p/kWh and the calmest third 26.89p/kWh — 2.61p a unit cheaper when the wind was blowing.

Two groups compared, not a trend. Over a single day of overlap a correlation would be an anecdote with a decimal point.

Contains BMRS data © Elexon Limited copyright and database right 2026. Supported by National Energy SO Open Data Tariff data from the Octopus Energy public API. Energy Review is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Octopus Energy.

Two kinds of wind, counted separately

Great Britain has two wind fleets and only one of them is visible to the system operator as generation. Transmission-connected wind — the large offshore farms and the big Scottish onshore sites — plugs into the high-voltage network, is dispatched directly, and is forecast by Elexon as WINDFOR. That is ten to eighteen gigawatts.

Embedded wind sits on local distribution networks, and to the transmission operator it is not generation at all: it appears as demand that never materialised. NESO estimates it separately, alongside embedded solar, in the same forecast that gives this page the rest of the week. That is one to two gigawatts.

Adding them is legitimate; substituting one for the other is not. Past the point where the transmission forecast ends, the embedded figure alone is about a tenth of the country’s wind — so this page leaves the total blank there rather than drawing a cliff that is an artefact of two horizons.

Why the table runs out at different points

Three forecasts, three lengths, and no honest way to make them one. Transmission wind runs about three days. Embedded wind and solar run the full week. Half-hourly prices are set in the day-ahead wholesale market and published in the late afternoon for the following day, so for most of any given day the price column has nothing to say beyond tonight.

A single chart drawn to the shortest of those would throw away four days of wind outlook. Drawn to the longest, it would invent five days of prices nobody has set. The table shows each series for exactly as far as it exists, and labels the end of each.

Why windy does not always mean cheap

The wholesale price is set by the most expensive generator needed to meet demand at that moment. Wind pushes gas plant down the stack, which is why a windy night is usually the cheapest time of the week. But demand matters as much as supply, and so does whether the network can actually move the power to where it is needed.

A very windy day in Scotland with the north-to-south boundary already full is the case where the two come apart: the wind is there, the turbines are paid to stop, and the cost lands in balancing charges rather than in a lower unit rate. That constraint is the largest single line in what it costs to run the system.

If you want the same question at half-hourly resolution and for your own region rather than for the country, that is on when to use electricity.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the wind column stop partway through the week?

Elexon publishes its transmission wind forecast about three days ahead and no further. The embedded wind and solar outlook from NESO runs the full week, so the later rows still have those figures. An empty cell is the end of a forecast, not a still day.

What is the difference between transmission and embedded wind?

Transmission-connected wind is the ten to eighteen gigawatts plugged into the high-voltage network, which the system operator dispatches and forecasts directly. Embedded wind is the one to two gigawatts on local distribution networks — the operator does not see it as generation at all, only as demand that never appears. They are measured by different people in different ways, so this page keeps them in separate columns and only adds them where both are published for the same half hour.

How accurate is a wind forecast three days out?

Good enough to plan around and not good enough to bank on. Two consecutive daily forecasts for the same hour two days ahead differed by about eleven per cent — 8,221 MW against 9,117 MW. The page states which forecast it is showing and when it was published, so the number can be judged rather than just read.

Why are there no prices for most of the week?

Half-hourly prices come from the day-ahead wholesale market, and the following day’s rates are set in the late afternoon. Nobody knows next Tuesday’s half-hourly price, including the supplier — so the column is blank rather than modelled.

Does more wind always mean a lower price?

Usually, not always. Wind displaces the gas plant that would otherwise set the price, which is why windy nights are cheap. But the price is set by whatever is at the margin, and a windy hour with high demand, an interconnector outage or a network constraint can still be expensive. Where enough half hours carry both, the page compares them and reports whichever way it came out.