Peak demand in Great Britain: 34004 MW, 2026-10-23 17:00 UTC

Context

Demand peak in Great Britain: 34004 MW in the 5-minute interval starting 2026-10-23 17:00 UTC. This is a record since 2026-10-23, the first date in our data for this market. The window is short, so the record says nothing about earlier years.

No earlier confirmed record of this kind exists in our data window, so this entry is a baseline that later readings can beat. Baseline entries are not marked notable and are not offered to search engines.

Conditions in the data at the same time: GB wind 11040.0 MW (reading at 17:00 UTC); GB renewable share 53.5 % (reading at 17:00 UTC); GB price imb30 145.0 GBP/MWh (reading at 17:00 UTC). These are the readings nearest to the record interval in the same database, shown for context only; they do not explain the record on their own.

First seen in a batch fetched at 2026-10-23 19:18 UTC (payload 04e8c83a23). It was confirmed after a second batch fetched at 2026-10-23 19:35 UTC (payload 7953f58f31): a later batch arrived, this feed does not republish old intervals, and the stored point stayed unrevised, unflagged and within 2%.

For comparison, the next most extreme valid reading in the same series is 34002.0 MW at 2026-10-23 17:30 UTC, out of 20 readings in the window.

Records are built from provisional operator data that can be revised, so each one is checked against later batches before it is confirmed and can be retracted if the source changes it. Readings outside market bounds, with a wrong unit, flagged by a quality gate or showing a price jump without a matching load change are rejected and never listed. See the methodology page for the full rules. Not for trading or operational decisions. Provisional data.