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A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022)
- user_james92 2y agopretty cool graphs
- onionisafruit 2y agoFrom the bottom of the page: > TL;DR: we can delete most of the emissions of the developed world today by switching heating & car and truck transport to electrical - if we make sure we generate all electricity with near-zero emissions. Just building more renewable generation won't solve it though, as you still need to make sure it covers all consumption everywhere. This map intends to show why that's a complicated problem, and why we should also be smart about where we build renewable generation so that most of the generated energy can also be used and not thrown away because the grid can't handle it. This is what I wonder about when I drive through West Texas and see massive wind farms in the middle of nowhere.
- kieranmaine 2y agoStats on wind and solar curtailment on the Texas grid - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=57100 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=57100 "In 2022, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid manager for most of Texas, curtailed 5% of its total available wind generation and 9% of total available utility-scale solar generation. By 2035, however, we project wind curtailments in ERCOT could increase to 13% of total available wind generation, and solar curtailments could reach 19%."
- skywal_l 2y agoA little faster and clearer one in my opinion: https://app.electricitymaps.com/ https://app.electricitymaps.com/
- jdthedisciple 2y ago[flagged]
- andix 2y agoCopper Sushi doesn't load for me, but I'm wondering how it is going to beat the awesome electricitymaps. They have all the data and quite a good viewer.
- skagenpilot 2y agoIt shows a much finer grained representation of the whole transportation network. So you have much better idea of where is electricity produced and consumed within each country. When it comes to figuring out what the electricity mix is made of, electricitymaps is clearer.
- pyrale 2y agoThey don't show the same thing. Electricity map is mostly focused on showing public market data about electricity and co2 emissions, while that site is a showcase of how a power flow works to calculate how electricity flows in the grid (not using real data of course, as the type of data used isn't public). Both are interesting, I understand the site displayed in this article aims to show the complexity of the underlying system, which isn't shown by electricitymap.
- insane_dreamer 2y agotwo different things; electricitymaps.com is a much more macro view, nice for looking at inter-country flows, whereas this one is great for looking at individual generation points and flows
- skagenpilot 2y agoWhen looking at France, at a zoom level where one can see the whole country, all the green dots are located next to nuclear power plants. It's a good reminder that the french grid is mostly powered by nuclear. It'd be nice to see the same map over summer to see if the different electric mix then gives birth to a different map.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoif it wasn't for France having primarily used nuclear power decades ago, Europe as a whole would be in a much much worse state when it comes to CO2 emissions. That makes it abundantly clear that nuclear needs to be a part of the mix when it comes to non-emission generating energy production.
- immibis 2y agoUsually in a sentence like "X makes it abundantly clear that Y" X should be some kind of objective fact, not speculation.
- briandear 2y agoAny data on how much France has slowed the decrease of global temperatures? Is there a “nuclear power to degrees saved” converter?
- insane_dreamer 2y agosomeone could calculate the savings in CO2 emissions over all the power generated by nuclear energy each year in France, since the power stations were built, vs coal plants (which would have been the alternative at the time)
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoThey replaced oil burning plants in France, when the global oil supply got disrupted. If France had coal to burn they wouldn't have been burning oil in the first place.
- cynicalsecurity 2y agoRussians taking notes.
- t55 2y agoRendering could be more performant, but pretty graphs!
- fulafel 2y agoThe highlighted saturated links are a nice touch.
- throw0101a 2y agoMeta: for those unfamiliar, 1.21 GW is a reference to the 1985 movie Back to the Future. Clip of the scene in question: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDuZqYeNiOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDuZqYeNiOA * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future If you haven't seen it, the entire trilogy is worth checking out: very fun and quite family friendly.
- w-m 2y agoIf you are a regular HN reader who is (or was until this post) unfamiliar with Back to the Future, I'd love to know three more random facts about your life. In my world view, you are part of a fascinatingly small group of people.
- parhamn 2y agoPart 3 came out in 1990. So, anyone born after (less than 34 years old) who didn't bother to go back and watch it, would be sufficient? I'm familiar with the series' existence, but had no idea what 1.21 reference was. AMA, hah.
- irrational 2y agoI have kids that are in their late 20s. They never watch older movies unless someone forces them to. There is so much new media coming out that they don’t feel the need to watch older movies, even if everyone is telling them it is very good.
- xandrius 2y agoCouldn't you put that media on when they were kids? I know movie nights are not a thing every family does but I'd imagine having one day modern movie, one day oldish from 80-90a, another day a classic from the 40s, etc. Wouldn't that have worked if you started from when they were young? I'm just thinking as that is my plan for when/it I have kids: mix older media with new one and just enjoy it with them. If it is truly good and not just nostalgia, they should be enjoyable even as a rewatch.
- post-it 2y agoSomething I've wondered for a while: if the whole continent is on a synchronized grid, how can countries tell to or from whom they're exporting and importing electricity. I can see how they can measure their total imports or exports by comparing generation to consumption, but how do they figure out which neighbour they're getting electricity from / sending it to?
- Filligree 2y agoBy measuring current flows across the wires.
- dismalaf 2y agoYou don't. You guess based on generation, consumption and where the power lines are hooked up.
- Gud 2y agoAbsolutely false. Current flow is metered using current transformers. full disclosure: I install high voltage switchgear for a living.
- dismalaf 2y agoSeeing current flow through switches isn't the same as seeing specifically where your power is coming from. Like, if power from several different sources flows into a single substation before it goes to your home, you know exactly which source created the electricity you're using? And if I purchase power from a 100% renewable company, is it always only electricity from their generators, never ever mixed in with power from other grid sources during downtime? No, it's just best estimates based on generation, consumption and flow. That's like taking a bucket of water out of the ocean and saying you know where it came from. Sure, it might have come from the nearest estuary, but odds are it got mixed in with water that originated somewhere else.
- rightbyte 2y ago
- coreyp_1 2y agoI get irrationally angry when a map is skewed in this way and there is no way to change it. The more you zoom in, the worse the distortion is made to be. Even zooming all the way out does not eliminate the angular distortion. This took actual effort on some programmer's part! Who ever thought that this is a good idea?!? It's like those navigational mini maps (car or computer game) that won't keep north pointing up... only worse.
- socksy 2y agoAlso got annoyed by this, but worked out pretty quickly that if you hold down right click and drag then you can change the angle
- _Microft 2y agoYou can also change the perspective by simultaneously holding the Ctrl key and moving the mouse.
- progval 2y agoOr move the cursor while right-clicking.
- locallost 2y agoDon't get angry so much over minor things, your older self will thank you. Somebody did something for free, gave it to you for free, and so they did not do a perfect job. There are worse things in life.
- ramon156 2y ago> we can delete most of the emissions of the developed world today by switching heating & car and truck transport to electrical Don't forget the fact that we need batteries to store the power, which is a much more annoying problem.
- wongarsu 2y agoHeating and transport are the easiest in that regard. Most trucks drive during the day have the driver resting during the night. At night there's little demand, but wind and nuclear continue generating, so from a grid standpoint that's the perfect time to charge all the trucks. Cars can similarly be mostly charged during the night, as that's when they are at home. Heat demand is more variable, but heat is much easier to store than electricity itself. Everyone with a boiler already has a heat store at home. If you make the boiler a bit larger you can configure it to only heat when there's excess electricity (typically the night or at peak solar power around noon). And that's before you start with more efficient heat storage devices, like heating sand instead of water. All of those solutions require infrastructure investments and smarter grids (likely with real-time pricing to incentivize consumers to use power when there's an excess, and an API so devices like chargers and boilers can act on this information without user input). But they don't require power storage at the grid level.
- praveen9920 2y agoOne observation I could make from the visualization is that major cities have very big power generation centers, despite that they seem to be drawing power from surrounding areas. It is very apparent near London. I guess it is obvious that bigger cities have more demand from both industrial and residential consumption.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- danbtl 2y agoWas this made with a visualization library? Or is this custom code on top of Mapbox?
- hughes 2y agoHugged to death? Map is not loading. Edit: Loaded after a few refreshes. Slowness relates to loading static assets from coppersushi.herokuapp.com
- zwaps 2y ago(German) offshore seems to be missing
- bschne 2y agoSomeone also set up a bunch of Graphana dashboards with European electricity data at https://energygraph.info/ https://energygraph.info/
- roschdal 2y agoDon't share this map of the power grid, or the terrorists will use it to end us all.
- kubanczyk 2y agoA map is not a territory.
- 1832 2y ago[flagged]
- KennyBlanken 2y agoImpressive - Norway and Sweden are exporting ~6GW right now with Finland throwing in for another GW. Probably contributing to the high percentage of EV sales. In Finland 90% of new vehicle sales are EVs. Sweden and Norway are at ~%60, and have a greater share of PHEVs. "EVs, they're gonna be a bloodbath" and "they don't work in the cold", indeed /s Never seems to occur to people that "I don't ever have to stand outside in the cold pumping gas into my car" and "I can have my car warmed up by the time I get in to go somewhere" are really popular features. Also, they didn't build out their EV charging infrastructure via legal settlement, leading to having chargers owned and operated by a company ambivalent about maintenance and repair. Europe as a whole is 24%, rising at a good clip. Also surprising is Romania - ahead of everyone except the Scandinavian countries and way, way ahead of all the former soviet states.
- raroma92 2y ago[dead]
- hokkos 2y agoMy visualisation of physical flow between countries or zones, you can see the net flow with arrow of relative size and colors : https://energygraph.info/d/7dWs1mVVk/interconnect-physical-flow-and-commercial-exchange?orgId=1&refresh=15m https://energygraph.info/d/7dWs1mVVk/interconnect-physical-f...
- internet_points 2y agoIs it missing hydroelectric?
- giardini 2y agoWhere's the Gibraltar Wave Farm? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar_Wave_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar_Wave_Farm Perhaps omitted since Gibraltar is a British possession and therefore not in the EU?
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoUnlikely that reason as Britain itself is included in the map
- oidar 2y agoInteresting that Corsica isn't connected.
- pyrale 2y agoCorsica is connected to the Italian grid. This map is simply based on a research paper where not every connection appears (notably, I don't see the 63/90 kv grid in France).
- fzeindl 2y agoA specialty in austria (in the middle of the map) is pumped-storage hydroelectricity. Since there are so many mountains and valleys, lakes are used as giant batteries. Water can be pumped up in times of excessive supply and released to produce energy when there's higher demand. This keeps the power lines stable and compensates for factors like lack of wind in wind power stations, startup/shutdown times of thermal power plants, differing consumption patterns because of colder weather etc.
- masklinn 2y agoPumped hydro is great but it requires very specific topologies (you need a large lower reservoir or a high flow river below the dam to have water to pump back up), it’s even more rare than good hydro locations, and completely artificial PHS à la Taum Sauk county are nearly unique. Worldwide, Switzerland is the main user and beneficiary of PHS relative to its electric capacity. Total it’s China, Japan, and the USA, they’re the only countries breaking 2 figures (in GW of generating capacity).
- mhotchen 2y agoThis is super cool. Found myself learning a few things about the power grid and of my country, and I spent some time looking in to the energy market off the back of this
- svara 2y agoThis visualization is super strange, you'd think the thickness of the lines would scale with Watts, but that doesn't seem to be the case? What does it represent then? Super confusing and pretty misleading.
- rjmunro 2y agoIt's a nice UI, and there is interesting data in there, but I think it is just an static estimate of averages, rather than something linked to actual live data like http://gridwatch.co.uk/ http://gridwatch.co.uk/ or https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/ https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/ It's not super clear. It says it's using 2 hour slots, but there's no clock saying when it was last updated or anything.
- sixthDot 2y agoAlso the name of the power plants is missing, on top of the fact that the data is outdated. For example after a little check I see that the Fessenheim PP (France) is still represented, although it's not producing anymore.
- preisschild 2y agoAlso ElectricityMaps: https://app.electricitymaps.com/ https://app.electricitymaps.com/
- seb1204 2y agoAlso https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/nem/?range=7d&interval=30m&view=discrete-time&group=Detailed https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/nem/?range=7d&...
- walski 2y agoForm their website: > The math behind it is real, and it uses the same calculations that real grid operators use to keep the lights on. However, the amount of power that each power plant actually produces depends on the price they offer. This price varies wildly from hour to hour, and neither the price nor the power amount is publicly available. > Instead, pypsa-eur makes assumptions on prices for solar, wind, coal, nuclear, etc. based on historical averages, and then runs an optimisation algorithm to cover all consumption for the least cost of production.
- philipwhiuk 2y agoIt's worth noting that it's a prediction, not a monitoring tool.
- zb10948 2y agoThis map is incomplete. We have 1 GW capacity of hydro chained in 3-4 power plants on just 20-30kms of river near our city, its nowhere to be found on this map.
- awinter-py 2y agothat wind farm sending 1 gw into scotland from norway is striking