EnergyCo UK is the pitch a real generator would make you — because underneath it, that's exactly what you're doing. Run coal and gas plants, watch the market clear in real time, and learn how UK electricity pricing actually works by playing, not reading.
Every half-hour, every plant on the grid bids at its marginal cost. Cheapest first, up the stack, until demand is met. The most expensive plant needed sets the price for everyone running that tick — including you, whether you're the cheap baseload or the plant that just tipped the market. It's never a replay of history. It's computed, tick by tick, from what you and the rest of the stack decide to do.
Two plants to start — a coal baseload and a gas peaker. Yours to run, hold back, or push through a breakdown.
When your plant is the one clearing the market, you'll know — a live callout fires the moment it happens.
Coal carries a heavier carbon adder than gas, baked into the price before any trading mechanic exists.
Half-hour settlement periods, matching how Great Britain's real grid actually publishes its data.
This isn't an abstracted mini-game with invented rules. It's genuine merit-order economics — why gas so often sets the price even when coal is cheaper to burn, why a cold snap sends everyone's bill up, why the marginal plant matters more than the average one. Play it enough and you understand the real grid, not just this one.
Dispatch runs itself by default. Watch the system work — the way you'd let an assistant manager handle scouting before you start picking the tactics yourself. Step in only when it matters: a maintenance call, a bet that price rises later, a one-off offer worth taking.
Run a plant degraded to save money and it might fail on you. Let demand outstrip supply and the lights go out — a named event, a penalty, a dent in your Reliability Score.
One decision between days, never a wall of options. Short enough for a coffee break, real enough to matter.
Day one is calm, no decisions — just your fleet dispatching automatically while you get a feel for the clock and the chart.
Day two brings a genuine demand spike, engineered so your gas plant becomes the one setting the price. You'll feel it happen.
Day three, and every day after — a maintenance call, a supply offer, a hold-back worth considering. Your fleet, your calls.
Renewables, a tradeable carbon market, forwards and rival companies are further out, not yet built. What's here now is the whole core loop, playable end to end.