The UK government tracks how much renewable capacity feeds the country's power sector through a set of recurring statistical releases called Energy Trends, section 6, published by the government's energy department.
The series covers renewable electricity generation, renewable electricity capacity, load factors, feed-in tariff capacity and liquid biofuels consumption. A separate monthly table tracks deployment of all solar photovoltaic capacity installed across the UK.
Release calendar
Two quarterly tables, ET 6.1 and ET 6.2, cover renewable electricity capacity and generation along with liquid biofuels consumption. They come out on the last Thursday of March, June, September and December, and the figures they contain run one quarter behind the publication date.
The monthly solar table, ET 6.3, follows a faster schedule. It is published on the last Thursday of every month, with data that is one month in arrears.
Certificate data lags too
A third dataset tracks Renewables Obligation Certificates, or ROCs, the paperwork suppliers submit to show they generated a required amount of power from renewable sources under the Renewables Obligation scheme. This table is published on the second Thursday of each month, but its data runs three months behind.
The update did not carry new capacity, generation or solar deployment figures alongside the schedule; those numbers sit inside the linked PDF and table files rather than the page itself. Questions on the statistics go to the government's renewables statistics team by email.
