Show HN: An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain

#21

Post by zakjan » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 1:29 PM UTC

FredPret wrote: post #11

Very cool. I always used earth.nullschool.net to get a sense for global wind patterns; this uses a similar animation.

I admit that earth.nullschool.net and other similar sites have pioneered the visualisation style.

However, their main drawback is that they are standalone, can’t be integrated to another application (besides an iframe).

WeatherLayers is built as a tool for developers, to allow for a seamless integration to other applications and allow overlaying with custom data such as wind power plants in this case, to support end-users with understanding the data in natural context.

Re: Show HN: An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain

#22

Post by ourlordcaffeine » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 1:54 PM UTC

jeffwass wrote: post #18

This is cool Robin! Do you also have access to solar data? Eg, I am a UK homeowner w/ a recent solar installation on my roof, would be curious to see how that looks too.

Sheffield solar are your guys. Maybe the best publicly available one.

Re: Show HN: An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain

#23

Post by ourlordcaffeine » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 1:57 PM UTC

Just wanted to say, as someone who works in the industry, wind FPNs are sometimes incorrect.

Grid have access to "power available" signals, but this is not public data.

Re: Show HN: An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain

#24

Post by s_dev » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

Windfarm generation Dashboard in Ireland and Northern Ireland: https://www.smartgriddashboard.com

Re: Show HN: An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain

#25

Post by robhawkes » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 2:04 PM UTC

s_dev wrote: post #24

Windfarm generation Dashboard in Ireland and Northern Ireland: https://www.smartgriddashboard.com

Thanks for sharing! I'm looking to add more countries to the map so I'll dig into the data behind this one.

Re: Show HN: An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain

#26

Post by robhawkes » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 2:07 PM UTC

ourlordcaffeine wrote: post #23

Just wanted to say, as someone who works in the industry, wind FPNs are sometimes incorrect. Grid have access to "power available" signals, but this is not public data.

Absolutely! I chose FPN data as it's the best available to me in near realtime but as you say, it's not reliable.

This is partly why I've been collaborating with someone on a prediction feature that tries to guess generation using realtime wind conditions and historic actual generation data at various wind speeds.

I'm hoping to improve things as time goes on and I learn more about the underlying data (and its quirks).

Re: Show HN: An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain

#27

Post by robhawkes » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

jeffwass wrote: post #18

This is cool Robin! Do you also have access to solar data? Eg, I am a UK homeowner w/ a recent solar installation on my roof, would be curious to see how that looks too.

Thanks! So I don't have solar data yet but I plan to first add aggregated solar using something like Sheffield Solar. Long term I plan to predict solar generation at a project/individual level using weather data and generation models.

There's some previous work in this area by others so I imagine my near future will be spent digging through various papers on the subject.

Re: Show HN: An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain

#28

Post by toomuchtodo » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 2:16 PM UTC

robhawkes wrote: post #25

s_dev wrote: post #24

Windfarm generation Dashboard in Ireland and Northern Ireland: https://www.smartgriddashboard.com

Thanks for sharing! I'm looking to add more countries to the map so I'll dig into the data behind this one.

ElectrictyMap.org uses a parsing engine to aggregate as many publicly available ISO/TSO/BAs to show live generation mix and cross border energy movement data when possible, and falls back to ML generated estimates otherwise.

https://app.electricitymap.org/map?wind=false&solar=false

https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-contrib/b...

Beautiful project you've done, really enjoy the visualizations.

(no association, just a fan)

Re: Show HN: An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain

#29

Post by bulletsvshumans » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

Really illustrates the potential benefits of offshore wind farms. It seems like there's a large overall difference between wind speeds on the land and in the water, especially far off coast.

Re: Show HN: An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain

#30

Post by robhawkes » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 2:38 PM UTC

bulletsvshumans wrote: post #29

Really illustrates the potential benefits of offshore wind farms. It seems like there's a large overall difference between wind speeds on the land and in the water, especially far off coast.

One of the most interesting findings from building this was to see just how important a distributed wind energy system is. The new offshore mega-projects like Dogger Bank are going to make a huge difference, and more onshore development will help with localised generation as well (avoiding transmission capacity issues, etc).

It's been fascinating to watch the various weather patterns over time to see where the gaps are in the locations of wind farms around the UK. It'll be great once we fill in the big hole in capacity off the south-west coast.