When this post went to press:

If the record is still ongoing, you can what it is up to now here in this article.

This hasn’t happened since coal was invented.

Ok, that’s not a very scientific way to put it.

Let me rephrase: This hasn’t happened since the industrial revolution began, more than 300 years ago!

Here’s another cool plot showing the evolution of Britain’s coal use over the last nine years:

The green bits are where no coal was used for power.

Though green makes us think of trees and birds and big gulps of fresh air, don’t forget that natural gas—which is still a fossil fuel—remains the UK’s largest source of power, covering 15-50% of demand most of the time.

Another cool interactive plot from Drax Electric Insights shows where the power comes from at any time in the UK. Feel free to geek-out with this plot. I know I did.

You can see the solar power input cycling up and down with day and night, and how important gas becomes on cloudy days without much wind.

This is called intermittency, and is a real problem for these two types of renewable energy.

That is a story for a cloudy day.

[Cover art: Guardian Design]