Open Infra Map; shows major electrical lines, power plants, gas & oil lines, and telecom/data centers. Gets its data from Open Street Map: https://openinframap.org/
For railways, there is a genre of "track diagrams" which are more like circuit diagrams for the railway, showing lines, crossovers, platforms, etc. The best ones for the UK are perhaps the Quail maps, which include all sorts of gory details, but are commercial:
Open Infra Map is just the kind of thing I was hoping for! I'm interested/surprised at how many megawatt batteries there are in the UK, and how many 10MW+ solar farms and at all the names of the offshore wind farms and where they connect back to.
True, unfortunately lightning maps doesn't seem to be accurate - at least I had 0 luck with it.
On the other hands flightradar24 and similar are so fascinating if you are on a busy plane route. The observation time is so perfect to speculate over the plane and destinations, chat about interesting facts or recent developments at destinations.
A few years ago I visited a small village where a relative of mine lives and happen to show a kid the app. Next year, I heard that the all the kids there made it a hobby to do plane spotting.
I agree. And I'm glad you put quotes around live. Much of the data for the US is estimated, not actually sourced from the grid operator. It'll be great when we have realtime data everywhere.
I wonder if this might be misleading. A lot of Los Angeles’ (LADWP) electricity has traditionally been generated generated by coal-fired plants in other states. I’d have to dig into more recent sources to see if that’s still the case, and whether that’s reflected in this dataset.
(Edit: read the sources list, and that should be reflected, but the map is not displaying heavy imports to SoCal. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d suspect LADWP obscuring sources in the published data).
Been a few years so things may have changed. But California no longer has long term contracts with coal fired plants. But probably is buying it on the spot market. With California it's natural gas -> solar -> everything else.
That’s interesting yeah like a tonne of Quebec hydro gets sold to New England it might or might not get counted
But I also can’t tell where the data is coming from why are so many Canadian provinces gray? I’m sure the website had citations somewhere but it was pretty slow in mobile safari so I didn’t bother to check
The test I always use for this is Prince Edward Island -- 100% of their provincial electricity generation is wind, but it only makes up 3% of their usage, the rest being imported from New Brunswick.
From that perspective the map must be at least trying to reflect imports, as PEI isn't listed as 100% green energy.
I find it mildly amusing how for all green talk and net zero pledges, EU bureaucrats and wide public does not give much notice to the third-world-level dirty-as-hell coal-powered generation in Poland.
They do - Poland agreed to the same decarbonization targets and participation in the carbon market as the rest of the EU so it had to implement policies supporting them - chiefly in the form a solar power subsidy program.
The program was more successful than the government anticipated and capacity ballooned so much that the grid needs modernization if it's to support more renewables.
Also electricity usage per capita per year is like 25% lower than say in Germany or France, so emissions in absolute terms are lower than they might appear.
There's a long way to go, but the country is on track to meet the goals set - partly because it's actually cheaper that way.
The EU has a cap and trade system ("EU ETS") for large industrial installations. So as far as I understand, the Poland coal plants are not invisible to the EU. They pay a market price for each ton of CO2 emitted.
Poland does try to cancel out the price signal sent by the EU ETS with billions of subsidies. I guess that's part of the reason why they emit so much. But the emission cap still holds; if Poland pays for the right to emit a ton of CO2, then that ton cannot be emitted elsewhere in the EU.
Unlike most of Europe they have very poor starting point with minimal hydroelectric power resources etc which makes things look relatively worse. However their current progress if you look at the graphs is still fast paced.
“In September 2020, the government and mining unions agreed a plan to phase out coal by 2049 which coincides with 100th anniversary of Karol Wojtyła being assigned to st. Florian's parish in Kraków,[10][11] with coal used in power generation falling to negligible levels in 2032“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Poland
I read your sentences three times and I don't get what exactly you're trying to criticize here or what you're raving at?
"All the green talk" is precisely about getting rid of coal-powered generation in Poland (and other EU states), so what the heck is your complaint here?
It sounds like to me that the complaint is why Poland hasn’t switched to green power already. A comment like that demonstrates a lack of understanding about the levels of effort to make such a change, as if the change to green power is as instantaneous and painless as flicking a switch (pun half intended).
This is super cool! For California, my understanding (from PG&E materials) was that highest demand and carbon intensity was around 3pm to 9pm. The graph here seems to show that even though demand/supply is smaller at night, we have very little non-solar renewables so that carbon intensity is pretty bad all night as well... If that's true, I'm curious why PG&E makes it sound like electricity use at night is not as bad. Do they anticipate bringing more wind online and are trying to get ahead with the messaging to the public?
You have a different definition of “bad” than PG&E. You are trying to minimize the release of CO2, they are trying to minimize the spending of dollars. As a huge generalization, building a power plant is more expensive than running it, so being able to run it 24/7 is generally more profitable than having to use “peaker” plants that are only running and profiting from 4-9pm.
In the industry the "duck curve" drives a lot of decision making and messaging around the grid in California.
Energy use late at night is not as bad, because there's less of it used. It's the 3-9pm (Usually I hear 4-9, but same thing) hours when solar supply drops off and demand peaks at the same time that they are speaking about. People plugging in cars to L2 chargers when they get home, lights all go on, AC on, etc. It's usually just talked about in the context of grid availability, not so much with GHG emissions, but things are changing in that direction as regulations continue to change.
Shameless plug - If anyone is interesting in developing in this field, we're hiring at olivineinc.com for C# and node/react developers :)
One concern I have about this map, is that the allocation of natural gas applies a flat coefficient to all natural gas sources. As far as I can tell, it does not give any rebate/reduction for natural gas that has a dual purpose -- namely, to provide heating and cooling in addition to the electricity process.
In other words, there are additional processes being driven by the residual heat, often called combined heat and production or cogeneration. It seems that the CO2 g/kWh should be lowered to reflect that these plants only supply a portion of the CO2 for electricity production. [1]
Being located on the mid-Atlantic rift means they have lots of volcanoes and plentiful geothermal power. So yes, they are 100% renewable, but they are also a bit of a special case.
They do have geothermal plants, but hydro is the bigger factor, accounting for about 75% of electricity generation [1]. Somewhat similar to Norway in having a favorable ratio between wet mountains and small population.
That UK -- Norway link is (or was) the longest undersea electricity cable in the world[1] at 450 miles (720km).
How do the exports and imports balance; Finland is importing 800MW from Sweden then exporting 400MW to Estonia, is it possible some of that is the same power? Norway is importing 425MW from The Netherlands and exporting 1.2GW to the UK and 200MW to Denmark?
Why does the UK export 73MW to Northern Ireland but then import 286MW from the Republic of Ireland, i.e. why doesn't Northern Ireland import from Republic of Ireland and skip the overseas bit?
Keep in mind this is a very 'zoomed out' view of the power grid. In reality every country is going to have grid limits internally and different sources of demand in different places.
For example, in your Finland observation it may be cheaper/easier to supply the north of Finland from Sweden rather than send the power that could otherwise go to Estonia to the other side of the country, probably not a lot of north south distribution internally in Finland because of terrain (I know Norway really struggles with this, you can see huge price differences in the north of Norway vs south of Norway on EPEX Spot - https://www.epexspot.com/en/market-data), so I would assume Finland is the same.
The UK also has huge bottlenecks north/south in distributing power. There's 4GW of HVDC planned to transmit power from Scotland to England, for example. Probably much more is going to be needed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_HVDC
As it happens this has been in the news quite a bit, and we've been told that the Finnish trunk lines are built for this [1]. Finland isn't split up into multiple electricity price areas unlike its neighbors.
There is currently only one small interconnect between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Another one (1500MW) is being built. This will allow Northern Ireland to benefit from Ireland’s substantial wind resources (~2GW).
> Procurement for the supply of materials for the construction of the overhead line is underway. Testing of the final pylon designs is being undertaken, with a view to construction beginning next year in order to have the project fully operational by 2026.
Hmm, maybe this is a "bug" or some intentional way this measurement is made, but when you view the carbon production over time, you can see that some low-carbon sources like wind & solar seem to vary in proportion to the energy being produced. So these aren't exactly zero-carbon because of production and maintenance and whatnot, but it's obviously very low. However, wouldn't this carbon production be annualised at a constant rate - solar power doesn't produce more carbon the brighter the sun shines (does it?)
It makes sense that there's some lookup of X energy source being Y tons co2 per mwh, and this is probably correct when the vast majority of the co2 is coming from the fuel, and the construction + maintenance etc are a rounding error, but this wouldn't be the case for solar, wind, etc.
Readit News
Is there a collection like an "awesome maps" list anywhere?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37187760
Open Infra Map; shows major electrical lines, power plants, gas & oil lines, and telecom/data centers. Gets its data from Open Street Map: https://openinframap.org/
Open Railway Map; shows railroad lines. Also gets its data from OSM: https://www.openrailwaymap.org/
Also Sentinel Hub has satellite imagery that although it has less resolution than ie Google Maps, it is updated daily: https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/
https://www.trackmaps.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Book5...
There are some pretty good open ones though:
https://cartometro.com/cartes/metro-tram-london/index.php?st...
Wow. London is surprisingly neat compared to a place like Paris.
Light Pollution - https://www.lightpollutionmap.info
Fire and Smoke - https://fire.airnow.gov/ (US) https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/ (Canada)
Earthquakes - https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
Ship traffic - https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/
Ships @ https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/embed/
On the other hands flightradar24 and similar are so fascinating if you are on a busy plane route. The observation time is so perfect to speculate over the plane and destinations, chat about interesting facts or recent developments at destinations.
A few years ago I visited a small village where a relative of mine lives and happen to show a kid the app. Next year, I heard that the all the kids there made it a hobby to do plane spotting.
I agree. And I'm glad you put quotes around live. Much of the data for the US is estimated, not actually sourced from the grid operator. It'll be great when we have realtime data everywhere.
- https://github.com/drushadrusha/awesome-maps
- https://github.com/thedoubler/awesome-maps-data
(Edit: read the sources list, and that should be reflected, but the map is not displaying heavy imports to SoCal. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d suspect LADWP obscuring sources in the published data).
But I also can’t tell where the data is coming from why are so many Canadian provinces gray? I’m sure the website had citations somewhere but it was pretty slow in mobile safari so I didn’t bother to check
It started as an open source project and it became an entire company
From that perspective the map must be at least trying to reflect imports, as PEI isn't listed as 100% green energy.
Deleted Comment
The program was more successful than the government anticipated and capacity ballooned so much that the grid needs modernization if it's to support more renewables.
Also electricity usage per capita per year is like 25% lower than say in Germany or France, so emissions in absolute terms are lower than they might appear.
There's a long way to go, but the country is on track to meet the goals set - partly because it's actually cheaper that way.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...
Poland does try to cancel out the price signal sent by the EU ETS with billions of subsidies. I guess that's part of the reason why they emit so much. But the emission cap still holds; if Poland pays for the right to emit a ton of CO2, then that ton cannot be emitted elsewhere in the EU.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/es/ip_22_...
“In September 2020, the government and mining unions agreed a plan to phase out coal by 2049 which coincides with 100th anniversary of Karol Wojtyła being assigned to st. Florian's parish in Kraków,[10][11] with coal used in power generation falling to negligible levels in 2032“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Poland
"All the green talk" is precisely about getting rid of coal-powered generation in Poland (and other EU states), so what the heck is your complaint here?
In the industry the "duck curve" drives a lot of decision making and messaging around the grid in California.
Energy use late at night is not as bad, because there's less of it used. It's the 3-9pm (Usually I hear 4-9, but same thing) hours when solar supply drops off and demand peaks at the same time that they are speaking about. People plugging in cars to L2 chargers when they get home, lights all go on, AC on, etc. It's usually just talked about in the context of grid availability, not so much with GHG emissions, but things are changing in that direction as regulations continue to change.
Shameless plug - If anyone is interesting in developing in this field, we're hiring at olivineinc.com for C# and node/react developers :)
In other words, there are additional processes being driven by the residual heat, often called combined heat and production or cogeneration. It seems that the CO2 g/kWh should be lowered to reflect that these plants only supply a portion of the CO2 for electricity production. [1]
1 - https://www.jenbacher.us/en/our-solutions/industries/industr...
I also liked the cross border exports and our dependency on each other.
[1] https://www.government.is/topics/business-and-industry/energ...
They joked (but seriously): "when it gets too warm in the house, you just open a window".
How do the exports and imports balance; Finland is importing 800MW from Sweden then exporting 400MW to Estonia, is it possible some of that is the same power? Norway is importing 425MW from The Netherlands and exporting 1.2GW to the UK and 200MW to Denmark?
Why does the UK export 73MW to Northern Ireland but then import 286MW from the Republic of Ireland, i.e. why doesn't Northern Ireland import from Republic of Ireland and skip the overseas bit?
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-58772572
For example, in your Finland observation it may be cheaper/easier to supply the north of Finland from Sweden rather than send the power that could otherwise go to Estonia to the other side of the country, probably not a lot of north south distribution internally in Finland because of terrain (I know Norway really struggles with this, you can see huge price differences in the north of Norway vs south of Norway on EPEX Spot - https://www.epexspot.com/en/market-data), so I would assume Finland is the same.
The UK also has huge bottlenecks north/south in distributing power. There's 4GW of HVDC planned to transmit power from Scotland to England, for example. Probably much more is going to be needed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_HVDC
[1] https://www.fingrid.fi/en/pages/company/information-for-cons...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czdvj4dv2pyo
> Procurement for the supply of materials for the construction of the overhead line is underway. Testing of the final pylon designs is being undertaken, with a view to construction beginning next year in order to have the project fully operational by 2026.
https://www.soni.ltd.uk/the-grid/projects/tyrone-cavan/the-p...
It makes sense that there's some lookup of X energy source being Y tons co2 per mwh, and this is probably correct when the vast majority of the co2 is coming from the fuel, and the construction + maintenance etc are a rounding error, but this wouldn't be the case for solar, wind, etc.
I suspect the sources would typically underestimate legacy sources (meausiring the co2 from burning gas but not the co2 from maintaining the oil rig)