I 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.
TIL there are no coal plants in the UK. How long has this been true?
Liftyee · 14m ago
The 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.
Huge 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.
alkonaut · 37m ago
How is that surprising?
nonethewiser · 34m ago
Its not. Why do you ask?
alkonaut · 29m ago
or interesting? I mean, why did you point it out? Wasn't it roughly what one would think/expect?
alias_neo · 29m ago
Interesting 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
HPsquared · 1h ago
Is there any way to turn off the animation? I'm getting about 5 FPS viewing on mobile.
arethuza · 1h ago
It's actually faster on my relatively new phone than on my ancient desktop!
Why is there a battery category? That does not seem to fit with electricity GENERATION but I may be missing something.
estel · 33m ago
Generation might be a slight misnomer, but it's conceptually the same as pumped storage - grid capacity that can be called upon as necessary.
nonethewiser · 22m ago
I think you're right. I think its more like you say - grid capacity that can be called upon as necessary. Which is roughly generation but not exactly.
dannyfraser · 31m ago
Generation 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 · 27m ago
So 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 · 21m ago
It 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.
nonethewiser · 19m ago
Im thinking of generation
tobylane · 9m ago
It's an input to the grid. They will also be an output.
infecto · 31m ago
A battery is a form generation. Ideally it soaks up power when not being used and then releases at peaks.
nonethewiser · 18m ago
A battery is a source of electricity. I think being a source is being conflated with being a generator. A battery does not generate electricity. It stores it.
infecto · 14m ago
You asked a question I tried to give you a reply. Most of the industry will classify it as a virtual generator. Happy to argue but not sure why you post a question and then refute answers.
wiz21c · 1h ago
Is 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)
nonethewiser · 36m ago
If so there is a very generous floor. Solar would probably not be visible if it was install capacity.
rmccue · 1h ago
I 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.)
Cthulhu_ · 1h ago
Related, in the Netherlands we have 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 · 32m ago
I 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.
CraigJPerry · 1h ago
Never 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 · 1h ago
I 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.
A 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/), 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/, but other good sources of energy data (across Europe) are https://transparency.entsoe.eu/ for power and https://transparency.entsog.eu/ for gas. Also useful are https://alsi.gie.eu/ for LNG imports and https://agsi.gie.eu/ for gas storage.
zeristor · 1h ago
I 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.
> 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 · 21m ago
"kW per hour"
petesergeant · 37m ago
for some reason I thought this would look much more bucolic than it does
arethuza · 13m ago
Ironically, hydro power causes a lot of environmental problems - a lot of glens in the Scottish highlands have had ugly roads bulldozed up them to install fairly small hydro schemes. Maybe this is worth it overall, but they can certainly be terrible to look at.
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.
Here's a kinda related site that I think is neat: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
https://app.electricitymaps.com/
* https://www.ieso.ca/power-data § Supply
* https://www.ieso.ca/market-data
The output for individual generators is available at:
* https://sygration.rodanenergy.com/gendata/today.html
(AIUI, historical data available for a fee.)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y35qz73n8o
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y35qz73n8o
Solar accounts for 5% of the actual output per https://grid.iamkate.com/
While domestic installations are counted, they aren't in OP's link. https://www.projectsolaruk.com/blog/latest-uk-solar-photovol...
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
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.
Great presentation of this data, i just lost 15 mins satisfying curiosity. Thanks :-)
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://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/
I work in this space (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/, but other good sources of energy data (across Europe) are https://transparency.entsoe.eu/ for power and https://transparency.entsog.eu/ for gas. Also useful are https://alsi.gie.eu/ for LNG imports and https://agsi.gie.eu/ for gas storage.
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.
Seems like a nice complement with solar, given that they peak at each others inverse.