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

renewables-map.robinhawkes.com

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

#31

Post by robhawkes »

bb123 wrote: post #20

Hi Rob! I have a request from an avid user of your visualisations in the Octopus Energy App. Could you please switch the y axis on real time data from Octopus Home Mini from Wh/min to just instant Watts? kWh/day makes sense on larger time scales but Wh/min is pretty meaningless to most people. Also it seems like it would be more readable as a line graph with datapoints, than a bar chart. A line graph would also allow…

Hey! So the Home Mini visuals in the app aren't something I'm personally involved in but I'll make sure to pass on the suggestion for you.

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

#32

Post by robhawkes »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #28
robhawkes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 assoc…

This is amazing, thanks for the detail! I'll set aside some time to have a proper dig through the Electricity Map sources – looks like it will help me expand my map beyond GB.

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

#33

Post by giarc »

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.

Sorry but isn't 'UK' and 'solar installation' an odd couple? My perception, based upon 40 years of western media consumption is that it's hardly sunny in the UK. I'm ready to be corrected though :)

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

#34

Post by rmccue »

Interesting to see where wind farms look like they're underperforming; i.e. where wind farms in high wind seem to be producing a lower percentage of their theoretical output than others in low wind areas.

Is that a problem with the data accuracy, or is that reflective of the real-world situation (e.g. misalignment of the turbines against the wind)?

(p.s. thanks for your work at Octopus!)

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

#35

Post by scythe »

robhawkes wrote: post #30
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 a…

I was surprised to see that Wales is mostly orange:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#/media/File%3AGloba...

The UK has had issues with limited transmission line capacity to Scotland which had led me to think that most of the generation potential was up there.

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

#36

Post by Telemark70 »

robhawkes wrote: post #27
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.

Please would you give a URL for Sheffield Solar.

I found sheffieldsolar.co.uk but could not find any data within that site.

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

#37

Post by kitd »

zakjan wrote: post #17

I'm here to answer for WeatherLayers, AMA! I'm super happy to help @robhawkes with this project. WeatherLayers consists of two products, that can be used either together or separately: - WeatherLayers GL is a frontend visualisation library with deck.gl layers which can be integrated with common map libraries. The library can be used either with custom self-hosted data or with WeatherLayers Cloud. - WeatherLayers Clou…

> WeatherLayers Cloud is a cloud service

Finally, a cloud service that has met it's true calling :)

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

#38

Post by robhawkes »

scythe wrote: post #35
robhawkes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I was surprised to see that Wales is mostly orange: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#/media/File%3AGloba... The UK has had issues with limited transmission line capacity to Scotland which had led me to think that most of the generation potential was up there.

I live in North Wales so can confirm it's pretty windy here and we have a few onshore wind farms around here too. We've also a few decent-sized wind farms just off the coast like Gwynt y Mor.

The Scotland thing is interesting as there's definitely issues with transmission constraints over the B6 boundary, though there's still benefits to building more wind farms for local consumption and/or storage as more batteries (especially) and pumped hydro capacity is added to the mix. Plus the National Grid have plans to expand capacity through to 2030 but I had to admit that's at the limit of my knowledge.

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

#40

Post by harg »

giarc wrote: post #33
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.

Sorry but isn't 'UK' and 'solar installation' an odd couple? My perception, based upon 40 years of western media consumption is that it's hardly sunny in the UK. I'm ready to be corrected though :)

Solar is pretty popular in the UK. Panels have reduced in cost per watt and energy bills have increased so much that it makes it worthwhile for many homes and businesses.

We do get the occasional sunny day contrary to popular belief, but even on cloudy days it's possible to generate a decent amount of energy.

We also have very long days in summer which can make for a decent amount of kWh/day (although the opposite is true in winter)

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