10 ms·

EU electricity production by country and source

213 points by fulafel 4y ago

the8472 4y ago
some of that as an interactive map: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR
- bogdanu 4y ago
  It's not accurate, at least for RO. According to an official site, 32% of our electricity comes from wind since yesterday. On this site it says it's 0.5%
- carlosbaraza 4y ago
  This is great. Incredible to see how many countries still greatly depend on coal as a key source of energy, including the US. Macro trends that take hundreds of years to fade out.
crypt1d 4y ago
Title is slightly misleading, as the linked website also includes data from European countries which are not in the EU (ie, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia, etc).
Tade0 4y ago
For a more visual overview I recommend: https://www.electricitymaps.com/ https://www.electricitymaps.com/ Recently they added a feature enabling the users to see production data per country on a monthly basis. From that you can see that France still hasn't recovered in terms of nuclear power generation capacity and that, along with high natural gas prices was the perfect storm that caused electricity prices to skyrocket. They're restarting as we speak and the effect on prices is already visible.
- locallost 4y ago
  Unfortunately the EdF revised their production targets down again, so we are a long way off. https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/110422-edf-cuts-2022-french-nuclear-estimate-delays-four-reactor-returns-into-2023 https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight...
  - Tade0 4y ago
    Good to know. Well, better safe than sorry I guess.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  Do they have a way to select map colors? I'd like to see one where the color/legend refers to electricity prices, not CO2 intensity
  - Tade0 4y ago
    Nope. But the project is open-source so potentially you could implement this yourself: https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-contrib https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-contrib
_joel 4y ago
Given the UK may be having rolling blackouts (fwiw, more curiosity) I've been keeping an eye on this https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/ - nice little dashboard.
Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
This is awesome data!! Is there an API folks can use to access this data some ML testing? Would be interested to see how production (and demand) and weather overlap.
- c-fe 4y ago
  entsoe has an API but its horrible XML code. I tried to work with it but just gave up at some point, too painful. I would recommend entsoe_py if you are using python, its pandas-based and does not contain all entsoe functionality but much more pleasant to work with
  - hokkos 4y ago
    Just use the csv data, way simpler.
    - c-fe 4y ago
      I generally agree, but for some of the data you need to download one csv file per month (or at least i could not avoid that) and at than point it becomes easier to use the api
- skagenpilot 4y ago
  On the production side, renewable production is fully influenced by weather and this influences also the other means of production as renewables have "priority" on the grid. On the demand side, it depends on how people heat (or cool) their home. In France, there is a lot of electrical heating and the partial dependency between temperature and demand is very well understood (and visible in the data). In countries where they rely more on gas story is different. A good way to study these dependencies is to do load forecasting with white box models such as General Additive Models [1][2], you get the full picture of partial dependencies between your input variables and target variable. [1] https://www.slideshare.net/cornec/adaptive-gam-12058258 https://www.slideshare.net/cornec/adaptive-gam-12058258 [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260448958_Short-Term_Electricity_Load_Forecasting_With_Generalized_Additive_Models https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260448958_Short-Ter...
Reason077 4y ago
The “ElectricityMaps” app is a great place to see it all in a live, visual form: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
- neuronic 4y ago
  Just saw that OPs linked website is the source for (some of) the data displayed there. Really cool.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Interesting that even on the yearly chart almost all green and greenish areas get their 'green' power from hydro and nuclear by large. If only wind and solar produced as much power as they do talk.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    The renewables buildout is still ongoing, while the nuclear and hydro areas were built decades ago. The hydro areas are also mostly former glaciated areas, which is a great advantage in terms of suitable sites. The post-first-oil-crash nuclear buildout might have continued if it hadn't been for the combination of fossil fuel becoming cheap again and Chernobyl fallout covering the entirety of northern Europe. The symbolism of Reagan taking Carter's solar panels off the White House made it clear that wasn't going to be the path.
    - moffkalast 4y ago
      Just a correction, those weren't solar panels on the White House, they were solar water heaters.
      - andrepd 4y ago
        Even that was too much for ol Ronnie x)
        4y ago
jphsnsir 4y ago
The residential solar which is immediately used by the house, is it counted in this table?
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  No
- tinco 4y ago
  No, and keep in mind the map paints a much rosier picture than reality if you're concerned about climate. Just grid electrity is but a fraction of total energy use, and nearly all other energy is gathered from burning gas, oil and coal.
shapefrog 4y ago
I am always (plesantly) suprised to see just how high the amount of renewables are. It really is quite contrary to the naratives - on both sides of the debate. Huge progress has been made over not that long a timeline, if nothing more than diversifying the sources of power. More can be done but it is impressive all the same.
- jdthedisciple 4y ago
  Don't forget this is only electrical tough. This has been pretty well known in my country at least. However, the full picture isn't so glamorous once you take all energy types into account. But I agree with you that generally too much panic is being created.
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    Many people are saying, "but it is only electricity". Of course, however, is there anything where the conversion has been from electic to petrol / gas / coal? My car is going electic, my bolier is going electric. This isnt new, it has been the path of travel for a while now. Unless Nvidia has really f'd up their calculations my 5090 graphics card isnt going to be coal powered.
    - jdthedisciple 4y ago
      That's fine for your home, but not when you extend your gaze to where all those items are actually produced: Industries.
    - exact_string 4y ago
      I think the point of "But it is only electricity" means that _currently_ the situation is not as good as one might think based on electricity production.
      - shapefrog 4y ago
        To quote from elsewhere. “Coal-fired power stations emit over 10 Gt of carbon dioxide each year,[4] about one fifth of world greenhouse gas emissions, so are the single largest cause of climate change” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-fired_power_station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-fired_power_station The counter factual; if the 60% of electricity coming form wind or sunshine at this instant was from coal, then 10 Gt of carbon dioxide each year becomes 20/30/40/50 Gt of carbon dioxide each year and global emmisions are significantly more than what they are now. Purely hypothetical, but it is where we were.
baybal2 4y ago
2Gkashmiri 4y ago
how are people who have rooftop solar in the EU facing the electricity crunch against people who don't have that?
- perlgeek 4y ago
  In general, higher electricity prices mean that rooftop solar amortizes faster, since you save more per kWh that you don't have to purchase from the supplier. Rates for feed electricity into the grid vary widely within the EU, for example in Germany it's around 6-7ct/kWh for home rooftop solar, in Belgium it depends on the energy company, but goes up to 40ct.
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    you can use that in home without selling to the grid, can't you?
    - perlgeek 4y ago
      You basically have these options: * connect your solar to the grid, sell off the excess (default for larger installations) * connect your solar to the grid, donate the excess to the grid (easier from the paperwork perspective, doable for very small installations) * have an "island" installation that's not connected to the main grid, move some devices to that island (you need two separate circuits, need to manage which device to put on which circuit) * go fully island / off-grid (you only need one circuit, but need battery and enough power generation to go through the winter all by yourself) The first two are definitively easier, the latter two only for real tinkerers / enthusiasts. So unless you count the latter two, the alternative to selling to the grid is donating the excess to the grid.
      - reportingsjr 4y ago
        This seems to big missing a major option: * Connect your solar to the grid, but also to a local battery. Charge the battery with excess solar until battery is full, then sell/donate excess. This has really started to become a viable option with solar panel prices being so low and battery prices (particularly lithium iron phosphate) dropping significantly in the last few years. Unless this isn't a legal method anywhere in the EU, but I highly doubt that.
hokkos 4y ago
I built https://energygraph.info https://energygraph.info based partially on ENTSO-E data, it uses grafana and a custom plug-in for the maps, focused on French nuclear and European eletricity with flow, day ahead prices and live and cumulative production by type or individual units.
- belter 4y ago
  Great work. Interesting site. I find it stunning that Germany, a country that according to Wikipedia has about the same solar potential as Alaska, produced 16,4GW ! from Solar, this last 2 November.
  - affgrff2 4y ago
    Does solar potential take into account the total area of the country?
    - layer8 4y ago
      As far as I can tell, the comparison is made based on the average number of sun hours per day, which is about 3 for both Germany and Alaska. I’m not sure that “sun hours” is a sensible measure for solar potential, but if it is, the energy produced would be proportional to the area utilized for solar panels.
boshomi 4y ago
An alternative source from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE: - DE: electricity generation by source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=stacked_absolute_area https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&... - FR: Electricity production and spot prices https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_spot_market/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_spot_market/chart.ht... - NL: Annual electricity spot market prices https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=en&c=NL&chartColumnSorting=default&interval=year&year=-1 https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=...
smallerfish 4y ago
If you have two of the same type of chart on a dashboard, _most likely_ you want the scale of the y axis to be the same on both (unless you very clearly call out the difference). When I land on this I get an "Actual Generation..." chart for Spain and Germany. Each chart is individually scaled, so the largest bars come to around 90ish% on the y axis, but in actual fact Germany's output is roughly (eyeballing it) 2x that of Spain's.
alfor 4y ago
Way more solar and wind than I thought. It seems Tony Seba is right. With batteries and EV they will displace everything else. Not that nuclear is evil on anything, but I don’t see how it will compete on price. (I understand the need for baseload, stability, keep what works, etc)
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Tony has a new series of videos out this week, in which he basically says, told you so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7vhMcKvHo8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7vhMcKvHo8
- yodsanklai 4y ago
  > Not that nuclear is evil on anything, but I don’t see how it will compete on price. What's the timeframe until we get 100% renewable? until then, nuclear will be needed and won't have to compete on price.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    “The roadmaps envision 80% conversion by 2030 and 100% by 2050.” [1] [2] Extrapolate out renewable and battery storage uptake rates. You won’t get the first kWh from a nuclear plant you start building today for at least a decade. Nuclear will have to compete on price so long as someone has to pay for it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17998672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17998672 [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435117300120 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...
zelphirkalt 4y ago
The website is funny. They call themselves "transparency platform" and they even got a .eu domain. Yet their cookie consent popup is so not GDPR conform, because it only has an "accept" button and not reject button at all. Fortunately trusty ol' element zapper gets rid of this and one can still look at the actual content one came for.
synu 4y ago
Watching the war in Ukraine, it seems like distributed local generation should be a significant part of the mix for national security reasons.
braamble 4y ago
For UK data, the best place to get this data is Elexon's Insights Solution - https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/ https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/. They have a great visualization for generation by fuel type, including interconnectors - https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-by-fuel-type https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-by-fuel-type This will replace Elexon's Balancing Mechanism Reporting Service (https://www.bmreports.com/ https://www.bmreports.com/) in 2023. The key updates are - better API support including XML, JSON and CSV, along with better docs - more data viz to really pull out the story behind what's going on - their new IRIS data push service will be delivered in early 2023

213 points by fulafel 4y ago

the8472 4y ago

some of that as an interactive map: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR

bogdanu 4y ago
It's not accurate, at least for RO. According to an official site, 32% of our electricity comes from wind since yesterday. On this site it says it's 0.5%
carlosbaraza 4y ago
This is great. Incredible to see how many countries still greatly depend on coal as a key source of energy, including the US. Macro trends that take hundreds of years to fade out.

crypt1d 4y ago

Title is slightly misleading, as the linked website also includes data from European countries which are not in the EU (ie, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia, etc).

Tade0 4y ago

For a more visual overview I recommend: https://www.electricitymaps.com/ https://www.electricitymaps.com/ Recently they added a feature enabling the users to see production data per country on a monthly basis. From that you can see that France still hasn't recovered in terms of nuclear power generation capacity and that, along with high natural gas prices was the perfect storm that caused electricity prices to skyrocket. They're restarting as we speak and the effect on prices is already visible.

locallost 4y ago
Unfortunately the EdF revised their production targets down again, so we are a long way off. https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/110422-edf-cuts-2022-french-nuclear-estimate-delays-four-reactor-returns-into-2023 https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight...
- Tade0 4y ago
  Good to know. Well, better safe than sorry I guess.
kzrdude 4y ago
Do they have a way to select map colors? I'd like to see one where the color/legend refers to electricity prices, not CO2 intensity
- Tade0 4y ago
  Nope. But the project is open-source so potentially you could implement this yourself: https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-contrib https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-contrib

_joel 4y ago

Given the UK may be having rolling blackouts (fwiw, more curiosity) I've been keeping an eye on this https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/ - nice little dashboard.

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago

This is awesome data!! Is there an API folks can use to access this data some ML testing? Would be interested to see how production (and demand) and weather overlap.

c-fe 4y ago
entsoe has an API but its horrible XML code. I tried to work with it but just gave up at some point, too painful. I would recommend entsoe_py if you are using python, its pandas-based and does not contain all entsoe functionality but much more pleasant to work with
- hokkos 4y ago
  Just use the csv data, way simpler.
  - c-fe 4y ago
    I generally agree, but for some of the data you need to download one csv file per month (or at least i could not avoid that) and at than point it becomes easier to use the api
skagenpilot 4y ago
On the production side, renewable production is fully influenced by weather and this influences also the other means of production as renewables have "priority" on the grid. On the demand side, it depends on how people heat (or cool) their home. In France, there is a lot of electrical heating and the partial dependency between temperature and demand is very well understood (and visible in the data). In countries where they rely more on gas story is different. A good way to study these dependencies is to do load forecasting with white box models such as General Additive Models [1][2], you get the full picture of partial dependencies between your input variables and target variable. [1] https://www.slideshare.net/cornec/adaptive-gam-12058258 https://www.slideshare.net/cornec/adaptive-gam-12058258 [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260448958_Short-Term_Electricity_Load_Forecasting_With_Generalized_Additive_Models https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260448958_Short-Ter...

Reason077 4y ago

The “ElectricityMaps” app is a great place to see it all in a live, visual form: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

neuronic 4y ago
Just saw that OPs linked website is the source for (some of) the data displayed there. Really cool.
moffkalast 4y ago
Interesting that even on the yearly chart almost all green and greenish areas get their 'green' power from hydro and nuclear by large. If only wind and solar produced as much power as they do talk.
- pjc50 4y ago
  The renewables buildout is still ongoing, while the nuclear and hydro areas were built decades ago. The hydro areas are also mostly former glaciated areas, which is a great advantage in terms of suitable sites. The post-first-oil-crash nuclear buildout might have continued if it hadn't been for the combination of fossil fuel becoming cheap again and Chernobyl fallout covering the entirety of northern Europe. The symbolism of Reagan taking Carter's solar panels off the White House made it clear that wasn't going to be the path.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    Just a correction, those weren't solar panels on the White House, they were solar water heaters.
    - andrepd 4y ago
      Even that was too much for ol Ronnie x)
      - 4y ago

jphsnsir 4y ago

The residential solar which is immediately used by the house, is it counted in this table?

formerly_proven 4y ago
No
tinco 4y ago
No, and keep in mind the map paints a much rosier picture than reality if you're concerned about climate. Just grid electrity is but a fraction of total energy use, and nearly all other energy is gathered from burning gas, oil and coal.

shapefrog 4y ago

I am always (plesantly) suprised to see just how high the amount of renewables are. It really is quite contrary to the naratives - on both sides of the debate. Huge progress has been made over not that long a timeline, if nothing more than diversifying the sources of power. More can be done but it is impressive all the same.

jdthedisciple 4y ago
Don't forget this is only electrical tough. This has been pretty well known in my country at least. However, the full picture isn't so glamorous once you take all energy types into account. But I agree with you that generally too much panic is being created.
- shapefrog 4y ago
  Many people are saying, "but it is only electricity". Of course, however, is there anything where the conversion has been from electic to petrol / gas / coal? My car is going electic, my bolier is going electric. This isnt new, it has been the path of travel for a while now. Unless Nvidia has really f'd up their calculations my 5090 graphics card isnt going to be coal powered.
  - jdthedisciple 4y ago
    That's fine for your home, but not when you extend your gaze to where all those items are actually produced: Industries.
  - exact_string 4y ago
    I think the point of "But it is only electricity" means that _currently_ the situation is not as good as one might think based on electricity production.
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      To quote from elsewhere. “Coal-fired power stations emit over 10 Gt of carbon dioxide each year,[4] about one fifth of world greenhouse gas emissions, so are the single largest cause of climate change” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-fired_power_station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-fired_power_station The counter factual; if the 60% of electricity coming form wind or sunshine at this instant was from coal, then 10 Gt of carbon dioxide each year becomes 20/30/40/50 Gt of carbon dioxide each year and global emmisions are significantly more than what they are now. Purely hypothetical, but it is where we were.

baybal2 4y ago

2Gkashmiri 4y ago

how are people who have rooftop solar in the EU facing the electricity crunch against people who don't have that?

perlgeek 4y ago
In general, higher electricity prices mean that rooftop solar amortizes faster, since you save more per kWh that you don't have to purchase from the supplier. Rates for feed electricity into the grid vary widely within the EU, for example in Germany it's around 6-7ct/kWh for home rooftop solar, in Belgium it depends on the energy company, but goes up to 40ct.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  you can use that in home without selling to the grid, can't you?
  - perlgeek 4y ago
    You basically have these options: * connect your solar to the grid, sell off the excess (default for larger installations) * connect your solar to the grid, donate the excess to the grid (easier from the paperwork perspective, doable for very small installations) * have an "island" installation that's not connected to the main grid, move some devices to that island (you need two separate circuits, need to manage which device to put on which circuit) * go fully island / off-grid (you only need one circuit, but need battery and enough power generation to go through the winter all by yourself) The first two are definitively easier, the latter two only for real tinkerers / enthusiasts. So unless you count the latter two, the alternative to selling to the grid is donating the excess to the grid.
    - reportingsjr 4y ago
      This seems to big missing a major option: * Connect your solar to the grid, but also to a local battery. Charge the battery with excess solar until battery is full, then sell/donate excess. This has really started to become a viable option with solar panel prices being so low and battery prices (particularly lithium iron phosphate) dropping significantly in the last few years. Unless this isn't a legal method anywhere in the EU, but I highly doubt that.

hokkos 4y ago

I built https://energygraph.info https://energygraph.info based partially on ENTSO-E data, it uses grafana and a custom plug-in for the maps, focused on French nuclear and European eletricity with flow, day ahead prices and live and cumulative production by type or individual units.

belter 4y ago
Great work. Interesting site. I find it stunning that Germany, a country that according to Wikipedia has about the same solar potential as Alaska, produced 16,4GW ! from Solar, this last 2 November.
- affgrff2 4y ago
  Does solar potential take into account the total area of the country?
  - layer8 4y ago
    As far as I can tell, the comparison is made based on the average number of sun hours per day, which is about 3 for both Germany and Alaska. I’m not sure that “sun hours” is a sensible measure for solar potential, but if it is, the energy produced would be proportional to the area utilized for solar panels.

boshomi 4y ago

An alternative source from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE: - DE: electricity generation by source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=stacked_absolute_area https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&... - FR: Electricity production and spot prices https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_spot_market/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_spot_market/chart.ht... - NL: Annual electricity spot market prices https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=en&c=NL&chartColumnSorting=default&interval=year&year=-1 https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=...

smallerfish 4y ago

If you have two of the same type of chart on a dashboard, _most likely_ you want the scale of the y axis to be the same on both (unless you very clearly call out the difference). When I land on this I get an "Actual Generation..." chart for Spain and Germany. Each chart is individually scaled, so the largest bars come to around 90ish% on the y axis, but in actual fact Germany's output is roughly (eyeballing it) 2x that of Spain's.

alfor 4y ago

Way more solar and wind than I thought. It seems Tony Seba is right. With batteries and EV they will displace everything else. Not that nuclear is evil on anything, but I don’t see how it will compete on price. (I understand the need for baseload, stability, keep what works, etc)

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Tony has a new series of videos out this week, in which he basically says, told you so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7vhMcKvHo8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7vhMcKvHo8
yodsanklai 4y ago
> Not that nuclear is evil on anything, but I don’t see how it will compete on price. What's the timeframe until we get 100% renewable? until then, nuclear will be needed and won't have to compete on price.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  “The roadmaps envision 80% conversion by 2030 and 100% by 2050.” [1] [2] Extrapolate out renewable and battery storage uptake rates. You won’t get the first kWh from a nuclear plant you start building today for at least a decade. Nuclear will have to compete on price so long as someone has to pay for it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17998672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17998672 [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435117300120 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...

zelphirkalt 4y ago

The website is funny. They call themselves "transparency platform" and they even got a .eu domain. Yet their cookie consent popup is so not GDPR conform, because it only has an "accept" button and not reject button at all. Fortunately trusty ol' element zapper gets rid of this and one can still look at the actual content one came for.

synu 4y ago

Watching the war in Ukraine, it seems like distributed local generation should be a significant part of the mix for national security reasons.

braamble 4y ago

For UK data, the best place to get this data is Elexon's Insights Solution - https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/ https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/. They have a great visualization for generation by fuel type, including interconnectors - https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-by-fuel-type https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-by-fuel-type This will replace Elexon's Balancing Mechanism Reporting Service (https://www.bmreports.com/ https://www.bmreports.com/) in 2023. The key updates are - better API support including XML, JSON and CSV, along with better docs - more data viz to really pull out the story behind what's going on - their new IRIS data push service will be delivered in early 2023