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UK Electricity Generation Map
- HPsquared 1y agoIs there any way to turn off the animation? I'm getting about 5 FPS viewing on mobile.
- arethuza 1y agoIt's actually faster on my relatively new phone than on my ancient desktop!
- dijit 1y agofun fact, the marriage of hardware and phone browsers (especially iOS) allow full utilisation of floating point calculations for javascript (since every “number” is a float of course). ARM is literally tweaking CPUs to be better at running Javascript: for example ARMv8.3 added a new float-to-int instruction with errors and out-of-range values handled the way that JavaScript wants. Meaning, yes, typically, the most powerful devices for browsing the web are in fact phones. Webapps that perform fine on an iPhone 14 can cause the latest i9-14900k to choke.. It’s hilarious. This is part of why the Apple M-Series CPUs feel like magic. Lots of electron apps suddenly perform very well.
- user____name 1y agoI got about 0.5 FPS on my iPhone 15. Yikes.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- unglaublich 1y agoNice, and on a global and interconnect level there's: https://app.electricitymaps.com/ https://app.electricitymaps.com/
- Iv 1y agoI am also a fan of RTE (French electricity distribution network) live website: https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/la-production-delectricite-par-filiere https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/la-production-delectricit...
- CraigJPerry 1y agoNever realised just how much diversity of power generation there is on my doorstep in Lanarkshire. I live basically in the middle of nowhere, this is not a dense population centre although several of the sites are dedicated to industrial processes. Great presentation of this data, i just lost 15 mins satisfying curiosity. Thanks :-)
- arethuza 1y agoI was surprised to see a solar plant near Rhynie - but then again it will be in the rain shadow of the Cairngorms so probably reasonably sunny... Absolutely fascinating map! Edit: As I typed that I thought "Rhynie sounds a bit Welsh (British)" and I checked and it might be related to the old old phrases for "king" - which seems appropriate for a place with a huge ancient fortress looming over it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhynie,_Aberdeenshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhynie,_Aberdeenshire
- alimbada 1y agoI was in Dumfries/Ayrshire a few weeks ago. Came up from Manchester; saw so many wind farms on the way and during our visit, most of them after crossing the border.
- pjc50 1y agoThe Conservative government banned new onshore wind in England for some years, hence the difference. There's now plenty of wind power in Scotland and a shortage of transmission capacity.
- wiz21c 1y agoIs it me or the size of the circles is proprtional to the installed capacity instead of the generated capacity (i.e. a 1200MW nuclear plant is as big as a 1200MW wind turbine, which seems not right to me)
- rmccue 1y agoI don't think they're directly proportional, seems to be some sort of tailing off - Seagreen 1 (1075) and Torness (1200MW) seem to be a very similar size to Neart Na Gaoithe (450MW). (This could just appear similar because area of circles isn't a great way to visualise data though.)
- nonethewiser 1y agoIf so there is a very generous floor. Solar would probably not be visible if it was install capacity.
- drcongo 1y agoThis is excellent. Led me to discover this mini hydro generator: https://courtfarmdorset.co.uk/water-wheel/ https://courtfarmdorset.co.uk/water-wheel/
- mnw21cam 1y agoJust a minute while I cringe at the units.
- haltcatchfire 1y ago> Yes, the water wheel will generate electricity all year round. In winter, it produces between 120 and 170 kWh per 24-hour period, with peak generation reaching up to 11 kW per hour. In summer, it generates between 3 and 5 kW per hour. Seems like a nice complement with solar, given that they peak at each others inverse.
- mnw21cam 1y ago"kW per hour"
- dreamcompiler 1y agoI've seen worse. But yeah, "11 kW per hour" is meaningless.
- dreamcompiler 1y agoUnless they're talking about the second derivative of energy I suppose: "My energy accelerates at 11kWh per hour per hour!" Which is not a thing anybody ever does. Oh wait, it matters for peaking power plants and Marx generators but there you'd use Joules/sec/sec rather than kWh/h/h.
- tialaramex 1y agoSurely in that world you're mostly working with latency not some sort of "acceleration". 10 outfits who can each deliver 100MW in 5-10 seconds, does not give you 100MW in a second, it gives you 1GW in 5-10 seconds.
- gdubya 1y agoVery interesting! Who made this?
- zeristor 1y agoI don’t know. I had noticed the Norway interconnect was running at 0 MW, and I was trying different sites to see if it was the data feed. It wasn’t, it seems Norway NO2 area has 50% water levels in its hydro dams, the rest seem OK but NO2 region is the one which exports power to UK, Germany, and Denmark. The little animations of power moving along lines are very cool.
- dannyfraser 1y agoA bit of digging in the T&Cs, Companies House, and LinkedIn pointed me to an individual working for the NHS who has put this together as a side project. I work in this space (https://www.woodmac.com/ https://www.woodmac.com/), mostly with natural gas data but have worked on power in the past so I'm always interested to see if it's anyone I know (in this case it isn't). Building something like this isn't really that difficult - all of the data is publicly accessible and if you can transform it and pull it into a database and build a front-end app then you're pretty much there. The developer has stated that the main source for this is https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/ https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/, but other good sources of energy data (across Europe) are https://transparency.entsoe.eu/ https://transparency.entsoe.eu/ for power and https://transparency.entsog.eu/ https://transparency.entsog.eu/ for gas. Also useful are https://alsi.gie.eu/ https://alsi.gie.eu/ for LNG imports and https://agsi.gie.eu/ https://agsi.gie.eu/ for gas storage.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoRelated, in the Netherlands we have https://energieopwek.nl/ https://energieopwek.nl/ which shows a chart of power sources (not all are selected, press top right to add more) and shows that the vast majority of electricity is solar/wind, even in winter, with non-renewables being used as the baseline.
- WJW 1y agoI don't think that's correct. It only shows renewable sources, and of those solar and wind are (obviously) the vast majority here in NL. But it's not even possible to enable showing coal and nuclear on that site, even though you can't convince me that they are literally not operating at all on a relatively cloudy day like this. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be surprised if renewables were a majority of the grid these days. It's just that this dashboard contains insufficient information to conclude that.
- frou_dh 1y agoThe main page https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live is just as interesting as the map that's linked to.
- saltserv 1y ago[dead]
- alexnorton 1y agoSee also the GB Renewables Map by Robin Hawkes which has a nice wind overlay: https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/ https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/
- nonethewiser 1y agoSolar has a count of 1354 out of a total of 3047. So 44%. Solar accounts for ~5% of the actual output per https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity and https://www.renewableuk.com/news-and-resources/press-releases/official-stats-show-renewables-generated-over-half-uk-s-electricity-for-the-first-time-in-2024 https://www.renewableuk.com/news-and-resources/press-release... edit: change source from https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/
- alkonaut 1y agoHow is that surprising?
- nonethewiser 1y agoIts not. Why do you ask?
- alkonaut 1y agoor interesting? I mean, why did you point it out? Wasn't it roughly what one would think/expect?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pixelesque 1y agoHuge offshore wind farms with hundreds of turbines are counted as single counts in this map though, so it's not really a compareable thing I don't think.
- hopelite 1y agoWhat would be the point of that? It seems to be by complex. You would not count every single generator separately at a hydro plant, would you? Every single solar panel?
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- nonethewiser 1y agoWhy is there a battery category? That does not seem to fit with electricity GENERATION but I may be missing something.
- estel 1y agoGeneration might be a slight misnomer, but it's conceptually the same as pumped storage - grid capacity that can be called upon as necessary.
- nonethewiser 1y agoI think you're right. I think its more like you say - grid capacity that can be called upon as necessary. Which is often from generators but not necessarily. The "interconnectors" are more evidence this isn't really about generators, but grid entry points. The interconnectors are connections to the French, Danish, etc. grids.
- dannyfraser 1y agoGeneration in this instance means power generation to meet consumption demand. Typically withdrawals from storage are counted as a source of supply to meet that demand regardless of the original source of the power in storage.
- nonethewiser 1y agoSo either the solar, wind, etc. datapoints are not being stored or they are double counting. It seems very unlikely all these solar, wind, etc. generators are not storing energy.
- tobylane 1y agoIt depends on what you're thinking of. No, the solar panels on my roof have no battery on the property. The wind turbines will have inertia, but no other store. I doubt the majority of the solar panel farms have batteries.
- throw0101d 1y agoFor those in Ontario, Canada, see perhaps: * https://www.ieso.ca/power-data https://www.ieso.ca/power-data § Supply * https://www.ieso.ca/market-data https://www.ieso.ca/market-data The output for individual generators is available at: * https://sygration.rodanenergy.com/gendata/today.html https://sygration.rodanenergy.com/gendata/today.html (AIUI, historical data available for a fee.)
- slavik81 1y agoThe Alberta Current Supply Demand Report: http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServle...
- Podrod 1y agoHah neat, didn't know there was a 15MW battery about 15 minute walk from me. Here's a kinda related site that I think is neat: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
- alias_neo 1y agoInteresting that the city I live in has basically nothing apart from a single, relatively small "battery". I wonder, does residential solar with export count towards this sort of thing? Presumably residential export is fairly small relative to everything else, but anecdotally, I export enough daily to run another home the size of mine. EDIT: Clarify a sentence
- ZenoArrow 1y ago> I wonder, does residential solar with export count towards this sort of thing? It isn't displayed on this website, or at least not all of them, I checked by looking for an installation that I know exists that is on a feed in tariff and it wasn't shown. To be fair to the creators of this website, it's probably quite hard to gather and display this type of residential solar information.
- alias_neo 1y agoI agree the display part is probably challenging, the exact location likely isn't recorded and the density could make it an issue to show on the map; regarding collecting it, I'd be surprised if there wasn't some public-ish record of it somewhere, we do all have to register with the DNO etc as micro-generators so it'd be interesting to know if someone makes an API with that information available. Aside from that, my real wonder was whether residential solar is factored into national renewables or if it's simply too little to be worth it.
- newyankee 1y agoI really wish a simulated version with very granular transmission and distribution capacity for different type of producers and consumers, from large plants to individual houses to community solar or agrivoltaics could exist. This might be very helpful in understanding how to correctly allocate the infrastructure to enable distributed production at the right place. What kind of reversible flow is possible ? What types of electrical equipment is needed etc. I feel finally we are at a place where grid cost might be much higher than solar and batteries when amortized over 20-25 years.
- scrlk 1y agoThe Estonian transmission system operator (Elering) has built this: https://youtu.be/NFuXzu-GIPo?t=51 https://youtu.be/NFuXzu-GIPo?t=51
- newyankee 1y agothanks, that looks quite interesting. Probably Estonia's push to be a true e-state has something to do with it, as the markets become larger transparency possibly becomes a liability for incumbent utility companies who will not like it
- Abidrahman435 1y ago[dead]
- dreamcompiler 1y agoTIL there are no coal plants in the UK. How long has this been true?
- arethuza 1y agoLast year: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y35qz73n8o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y35qz73n8o
- Liftyee 1y agoThe last coal power plant was shut down in late 2024. I remember checking the grid power stats before then and often seeing 0 MW of coal generated power. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y35qz73n8o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y35qz73n8o
- toomuchtodo 1y agoBritain's last coal-fired power plant shuts down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41734993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41734993 - October 2024 (95 comments) UK to finish with coal power after 142 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41695587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41695587 - September 2024 (63 comments) Britain's reliance on coal-fired power set to end after 140 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41443347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41443347 - September 2024 (70 comments)
- pjc50 1y agoThere's a slight fudge: the largest coal plant, Drax, is still in operation - burning wood pellets imported from the US and Canada. In theory this is CO2-neutral. But it could go back to coal in an emergency with some enabling legislation.
- _mlbt 1y agoHow do they import these wood pellets? Is it fossil fuel powered ships? Is that factored in to the CO2 neutrality?
- bparsons 1y agoThe minimalist Alberta Electricity System Operator dashboard is far superior: http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServle...
- hk1337 1y agoWind generation is king, apparently. I'm curious what the imports consist of, presumably natural gas but it's not indicated; however it doesn't seem to have that big of a reliance.
- arethuza 1y agoI think the imports refer to power transfers to/from other countries along interconnectors? https://www.nationalgrid.com/national-grid-ventures/interconnectors-connecting-cleaner-future https://www.nationalgrid.com/national-grid-ventures/intercon...
- frameset 1y agoWe import from France mostly, via the interconnects between our countries' grids. That means it's probably mostly nuclear.
- ZeroGravitas 1y agoThe electricity maps site calculates the carbon intensity of the grid imports and lists it on the map and the country specifically views (click for more info): https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly As a general rule, the imports are imported because they are cheaper and generally cheaper means cleaner.
- ksec 1y agoMost of it is still Wind Farm on shore, how Off shore is not at least 50% of UK energy output is completely beyond me.
- arethuza 1y agoThe default view is for Operational sites - you can add other categories e.g. "Under Construction" which gives a view of the pipeline of new sites. There are a lot of offshore wind sites at various stages of construction/planning - some that are amongst the largest in the world.
- ajd555 1y agoThis looks great! I've been planning on adding NYISO power data to the NYC Dashboard (https://dash.hudsonshipping.co https://dash.hudsonshipping.co), so this is very encouraging to see! I unfortunately don't think the US has such granular data - I love seeing the interconnectors to other countries.
- komali2 1y agoWe have this in Taiwan but it's uglier and some moron put `user-select: none` on the table. But anyway: https://www.taipower.com.tw/d006/loadGraph/loadGraph/genshx_.html https://www.taipower.com.tw/d006/loadGraph/loadGraph/genshx_...
- boringg 1y agoSome kind of form of this energy data visualization shows up on hacker news every 6 months or so ... why is that?
- cramcgrab 1y agoWow! The app is just as fast as parliament!
- divbzero 1y agoAre there electricity generation maps with the same level of granularity for other countries? Or is the UK unusual for providing data for each power plant?
- nikcub 1y agohere's Australia: https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/ https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/
- lloydatkinson 1y agoAlways impressed with these because the disjointed energy APIs that exist in the UK are quit honestly the worst APIs I’ve ever had the misfortune of trying to use.
- 0xWTF 1y agoIt would be nice if the totals included total power produced by the selected subset.
- NooneAtAll3 1y agolist of energy sources doesn't have scrollbar - so on a device with not enough screen height it's impossible to read the whole list without using browser zoom
- lolc 1y agoApparently there's a 400 MW flywheel near Oxford! It's listed as battery which is close enough I guess.