Renewables / price cannibalisation
Not all megawatt-hours are equal.
Capture rate measures the price a technology earns when it is generating, relative to the average market price. Below 100% means its output tends to arrive in cheaper periods.
Two different views
Recent observed data is a market-price proxy. The 2030 view is a published forecast assumption. They are kept visibly separate.
The latest complete week
Half-hourly market-index prices weighted by estimated wind or solar output. Refreshed every 30 minutes as source data becomes available.
Calculating recent capture rates…
The calculation aligns three half-hourly datasets before publishing a result.
The model expects a growing discount
The electricitybills.uk model uses capture-rate assumptions from the AR7 Allocation Framework to estimate how renewable revenues diverge from baseload prices.
By 2030, the model assumes wind earns 77% of baseload and solar 81%.
That is a forecast input, not a promise or an observed historic series. Onshore and offshore wind use the same assumption in the source model.
| Year | Wind | Solar | Wind discount |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 92% | 90% | −8% |
| 2026 | 91% | 89% | −9% |
| 2027 | 91% | 89% | −9% |
| 2028 | 85% | 86% | −15% |
| 2029 | 79% | 82% | −21% |
| 2030 | 77% | 81% | −23% |
Sources and calculation
The live proxy is calculated by this site; the forward assumptions are reproduced with attribution.