3 ms·

Should I Bake?

andybrace 6y ago
There's a really good primer article to give some context here: https://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-supply-and-demand-during-lockdown-and-the-best-time-to-bake-bread-141345 https://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-supply-and-dema... and we've also created the following for a better bake! - a twitter forecast (https://twitter.com/baking4cast https://twitter.com/baking4cast) - an Alexa Skill (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Baking-Forecast-Bake-renewable-power/dp/B08944JQQ2 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Baking-Forecast-Bake-renewable-powe...)
deleted 6y ago
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yunusabd 6y ago
Neat idea, any reason why you focus specifically on baking as the main activity? Found this [1] while looking for numbers for Germany. It's showing different values for the percentage of renewable energy use in GB, 38% vs 26% on your site. Any idea why? [1] https://www.electricitymap.org https://www.electricitymap.org
- andybrace 6y ago
  Hey! Good question RE why baking, because this does apply to any energy intensive activities (possibly an iteration for the future). ....so, 1) we've started with baking as we believe its the most accessible way to contextualise what is a challenging topic to explain (especially for those outside of the academic world) 2) the wider the audience we're able to engage, we hope, the greater the impact. Baking is a ubiquitous activity that (almost all?) households do regularly, and it can be scheduled around the forecast with fairly low impact to the user's time 3) cause baking is also pretty popular right now ;) But the same logic applies to other activities, it's better to use the dishwasher, wash your clothes, charge your (car) batteries when there's more renewable energy being generated. RE the discrepancy between the figures, we're only including 'hydro', 'wind' and 'solar' in our calculations, whereas the Electricity Map includes Biomass (which can be a controversial inclusion due to the associated land use and biodiversity impacts). Also, a lot of this is based on forecasting models (which rely on many factors incl historic weather data, forecasted weather, consumption etc etc), so... you could say it's similar in some ways to predicting the weather. We use the GB's National Grid Carbon Intensity statistics (https://carbonintensity.org.uk/ https://carbonintensity.org.uk/) for our data so that we're most closely aligned geographically.
  - andybrace 6y ago
    Also one of co-creators has said RE biomass: A significant proportion of biomass in the UK is imported. Some from the Americas . Also we don't look at the imports. I suspect the electricity map attempts to take that into account as that is the aim of their site. We exclude imports, which are probably nuclear anyway. Some sites include nuclear as a clean fuel.
  - yunusabd 6y ago
    Thanks for the insights! I agree that baking is a good gateway. I think it would be even more persuasive if you could come up with some calculations, to show how much CO2 can be saved individually and collectively by following the recommendations.
    - andybrace 6y ago
      yep definitely, quantifying the impact of changing the time you bake would be a great next step (.....we've got quite a lot on our list).

There's a really good primer article to give some context here: https://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-supply-and-demand-during-lockdown-and-the-best-time-to-bake-bread-141345 https://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-supply-and-dema... and we've also created the following for a better bake! - a twitter forecast (https://twitter.com/baking4cast https://twitter.com/baking4cast) - an Alexa Skill (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Baking-Forecast-Bake-renewable-power/dp/B08944JQQ2 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Baking-Forecast-Bake-renewable-powe...)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

yunusabd 6y ago

Neat idea, any reason why you focus specifically on baking as the main activity? Found this [1] while looking for numbers for Germany. It's showing different values for the percentage of renewable energy use in GB, 38% vs 26% on your site. Any idea why? [1] https://www.electricitymap.org https://www.electricitymap.org

andybrace 6y ago
Hey! Good question RE why baking, because this does apply to any energy intensive activities (possibly an iteration for the future). ....so, 1) we've started with baking as we believe its the most accessible way to contextualise what is a challenging topic to explain (especially for those outside of the academic world) 2) the wider the audience we're able to engage, we hope, the greater the impact. Baking is a ubiquitous activity that (almost all?) households do regularly, and it can be scheduled around the forecast with fairly low impact to the user's time 3) cause baking is also pretty popular right now ;) But the same logic applies to other activities, it's better to use the dishwasher, wash your clothes, charge your (car) batteries when there's more renewable energy being generated. RE the discrepancy between the figures, we're only including 'hydro', 'wind' and 'solar' in our calculations, whereas the Electricity Map includes Biomass (which can be a controversial inclusion due to the associated land use and biodiversity impacts). Also, a lot of this is based on forecasting models (which rely on many factors incl historic weather data, forecasted weather, consumption etc etc), so... you could say it's similar in some ways to predicting the weather. We use the GB's National Grid Carbon Intensity statistics (https://carbonintensity.org.uk/ https://carbonintensity.org.uk/) for our data so that we're most closely aligned geographically.
- andybrace 6y ago
  Also one of co-creators has said RE biomass: A significant proportion of biomass in the UK is imported. Some from the Americas . Also we don't look at the imports. I suspect the electricity map attempts to take that into account as that is the aim of their site. We exclude imports, which are probably nuclear anyway. Some sites include nuclear as a clean fuel.
- yunusabd 6y ago
  Thanks for the insights! I agree that baking is a good gateway. I think it would be even more persuasive if you could come up with some calculations, to show how much CO2 can be saved individually and collectively by following the recommendations.
  - andybrace 6y ago
    yep definitely, quantifying the impact of changing the time you bake would be a great next step (.....we've got quite a lot on our list).