Britain was powered by sources other than coal for over 100 hours at the weekend, the longest time since the start of the industrial revolution, new figures have revealed.

The National Grid says the country is increasingly less dependant on coal as renewable energy sources are more reliable and the public is installing solar panels at home in ever greater numbers. Reliance on renewable energy sources is now “a more regular occurrence”.

Coal now accounts for under 10 per cent of Britain’s power output and the government plans to phase out the country’s last coal-fired power plants by 2025 in a bid to cut carbon emissions.

Of the 31.45 gigawatts (GW) powering the UK on May 5, none was accounted for by the use of coal-fired power stations (1 GW is enough to power 100 million LED lightbulbs).

Renewable energy sources have contributed an increasing proportion of Britain’s power generation in recent years. In 2018 wind generation exceeded 15GW for the first time.

Sean Kemp, a spokesman for the National Grid, said: “We broke the record this weekend for the longest period of time without coal. The continuous period of time without any coal generation on the system was just over 100 hours.