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A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022)

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Re: A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022)

#91

Post by elihu »

masklinn wrote: post #48
thrance wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you included transportation in your stats: planes, cars, trucks and boats. The electrical mix in France includes only 8% from fossil fuels, of which 7% come from natural gas. The rest is mostly nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar. In that order. France also regularly sells its surplus to neighboring countries.

> France also regularly sells its surplus to neighboring countries. And in order to do that it has pretty massive lines to neighbours meaning it also acts as an exchange platform (for a profit) e.g. if there are strong winds it can buy electricity from an oversupplied german grid and sell it to italy. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/24h provides live views of the european electricity grids, and France is the only…

Interesting to see they have data for Russia now. I think that's new.

Re: A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022)

#92

Post by RandomThoughts3 »

fsh wrote: post #88
thrance wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you included transportation in your stats: planes, cars, trucks and boats. The electrical mix in France includes only 8% from fossil fuels, of which 7% come from natural gas. The rest is mostly nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar. In that order. France also regularly sells its surplus to neighboring countries.

Most countries use way more primary energy for heating and transportation than for electricity generation. It would be disingenuous not to include this.

It’s fairly disingenuous to mix both actually when they don’t mingle. Especially when you consider that both heating and transportation are going in the direction of using more electricity which is actually favorable to the French choice.

Re: A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022)

#93

Post by RandomThoughts3 »

pydry wrote: post #86
kergonath wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say whatever you want when discussion the cost of nuclear in France because of the structure of its nuclear industry. Part of it comes from the government’s budget, so depending on your point of view it can be accounted for differently. Then, there are externalities (pollution, greenhouse gases, etc). And then there are strategic aspects and associated costs. The alternative in the 1970s was skyrocketing oil,…

>The alternative in the 1970s was skyrocketing oil They imported and still import just as much oil as anyone else.

They in fact import far less gas than Germany and let’s not even look at coal.

Re: A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022)

#94

Post by rsynnott »

CalRobert wrote: post #67
aziaziazi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What storage are you referring too? I see residential ones in houses but absolutely nothing of state-scale, which is necessary to keep industries and services running. Materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket. We’re still to see the renewables going further than the residential proof of concept on a society scale. God bless plutonium.

Eh… plutonium? I think uranium is the usual choice. Home batteries can be part of a grid level response but this is nascent.

France, unusually, actually does, or at least did, use significant amounts of plutonium (a combo of decommissioned weapons and nuclear reprocessing output) in nuclear energy generation, but yeah, primarily uranium.

Re: A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022)

#95

Post by thrance »

qayxc wrote: post #63
thrance wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany may use more renewables in volume, but it is absolutely dirtier than in France. Their electrical mix makes use of lots of natural gas and lignite coal, the worst kind, both expensive and very dirty.

Compare to the PAST, not the present! As you can see, the trend is downwards and steadily at that: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris... Rome wasn't built in a day and I find it hilarious to advocate for nuclear power instead, if the average construction time (not even taking into account the prior mountain of bureaucracy) is over a decade. Not a single nuclear power plant built in past 15 y…

Strategically speaking, Europe lacks the natural resources to build renewable, wind turbines and solar panels have to be imported, most of them from Asia.

Nuclear is still a bit cheaper per Watt and less carbon intensive, as it involves less infrastructure, logistics and batteries overall. It's also somewhat more reliable, as it doesn't depend on sun or wind (the former of which France often lacks).

Also, I am hopeful that nuclear power plant construction delays will only improve in the near future, as Europe rebuilds its expertise in nuclear engineering, which it lost after the past decades of anti-nuclear waves.

Finally, I don't see fossil fuel usage going down much in Germany in the link you gave, if at all. Which is the only thing that matters, ecologically speaking.

Re: A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022)

#96

Post by ZeroGravitas »

realusername wrote: post #31
barbazoo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if that still holds true nowadays with renewable energy and storage having got cheaper and cheaper.

The result speaks for themselves, Germany still hasn't reached France 90s levels of emissions.

Yes it has:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-intensity?tab=chart&t...

Re: A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022)

#97

Post by poniko »

coreyp_1 wrote: post #21

I 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...…

Two fingers scroll on mobile.

Re: A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022)

#98

Post by cafeinux »

locallost wrote: post #49
post-it wrote: post #16

Something 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?

It's a fair question. Energy charts has both the physical flows and trading charts for Germany. E.g. trading https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&... Physical flows https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&... And it's not the same, so sometimes there is just "transit", although transit here should I guess be understood very loosely. I also assume they just know who paid for…

Disclaimer: I'm working for an actor in the electricity market, although not on the business side so I don't know everything about it.

They do know who paid for what. And actually anyone is able to know. It's a very regulated market, and most of its data is published, although I have to admit that if you don't know how to fetch it and read it, it's a bit hard to figure out by yourself.

You should be able to find published data on the ACER Remit Portal (https://www.acer-remit.eu/portal/home), ENTSO-E Transparency Platform (https://m-transparency.entsoe.eu/) and JAO website, Market Data tab (https://www.jao.eu).

Re: A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022)

#99

Post by gharlan »

hokkos wrote: post #76

My 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-f...

This is really cool! What specific data source(s) are used in the wind turbine charge factors view?
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