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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

#51

Post by pjc50 »

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 :)

Out of date but: https://flatline.org.uk/daystats.html

A ~4kW installation gives me up to ~25kWh on a good day in summer. The big factor is actually the precession of the seasons since I'm at 56 degrees north. Retail electricity prices are now over 30p a kWh, so anything you can do to offset that is very useful.

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

#52

Post by robhawkes »

insaider wrote: post #42

Nice! I worked on a similar project in Ireland - https://www.ux-design-awards.com/winners/2022-1-376-rtv-esb-...

This looks great! Is it publicly accessible anywhere? I couldn't find it.

I'm hoping to expand beyond GB and Ireland would be a great next step if the data is publicly available.

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

#53

Post by robhawkes »

flir wrote: post #39

Suggestion: when I click on a windfarm's name, instead of removing all the other windfarms from the map, it should leave them but highlight the selected windfarm in some way.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to be spending some time soon on the UX so I'll add this to the list to look at.

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

#55

Post by RugnirViking »

robhawkes wrote: post #49
limbicsystem wrote: post #47

From this map you might think that the UK is currently depending (96.5%) on fossil fuels. But it's not quite that bad: https://grid.iamkate.com/ The real eye-opener (for me) on the latter display is the emissions per kwh over all time - dropped steadily from 500g in (only!) 2012 to a steady 150g or so recently. Encouraging!

This is a good point – I'm not currently accounting for solar in the aggregate and I'm lumping everything else as "non-renewable" which is true but not ideal as it's not all fossil fuels. I'm going to look at how to be a little more accurate with this, similar to Kate's great website.

I think hydro and tidal power is renewable right?

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

#56

Post by rmccue »

g_p wrote: post #48
robhawkes wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be for a number of reasons, such as: - Wind speeds are from GFS forecasts and cover quite a wide area - The realtime generation data from the balancing system isn't 100% precise and is averages over a 30-minute period - Some wind farms are simply much more efficient, especially large offshore ones - Individual turbines might be down for maintenance and/or not running efficiently - Localised issues like wak…

Also another reason - a generation site may be curtailed, meaning that its output is restricted due to grid capacity limitations, and allowing it to export more energy onto the local power network may exceed safe operating parameters for the lines connecting the generation site to the grid. Therefore in high wind, you would expect that in areas of dense generation, especially those with limited capacity interconnects…

I could see this being the case for regional balancing, but presumably a 1GW generation site has a 1GW-capable link to the grid, otherwise that seems like overbuilt capacity?

(nb of course you might overprovision it to some degree on the presumption that, say, only 70% of your generation is usable at any one time; I more mean the numbers like say 16%.)

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

#57

Post by kmax12 »

jve wrote: post #5

I'v seen charts (someone posted on HN as a comment) where it shows generated electricity by type: solar, hidro, wind, gas, etc and by hour, for many countries. Anyone can bring up the link?

I’m working on one for the United States! It also has a lot more data about grid operations like wholesale pricing of electricity

https://www.gridstatus.io/

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

#58

Post by WeylandYutani »

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.

Also no NIMBYs on the North Sea. There's some angry fishermen and ecologists but for the most part "out of sight out of mind".

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

#60

Post by ricardo81 »

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 :)

There is definitely an ROI, especially with recent prices (current tariffs are around 33p kWh)

Then there's the likes of Ripple Energy's solar park co-op offering. The levelised cost of buying in is around 2.5p kWh, with another 2p kWh going on maintenance. The return on the 1st (and active) co-op agreement there via a wind farm is 28p kWh, no reason why the solar park would give different returns than the wind one. Here in the UK grid pricing is more or less the same nationally.

Unfortunately there's much less of a return in Winter months due to higher latitudes, though in Summertime the days are longer than in many other countries.

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