GB Renewables Map
Data
energy generation visualisation
SHOW HN2023
GB Renewables Map
An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain
renewables-map.robinhawkes.com#wind farm map#live wind generation#great britain energy#renewable energy visualisation
How HN took it
7 positive, 12 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 7 critical, out of 26 comments about the project. Thread score -0.05.
Design: 3 for, 1 againstPerformance: 0 for, 3 againstIdea: 1 for, 1 againstExecution: 0 for, 2 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Impressive data visualisation
From 2 comments
Amazing piece of data visualization. I work with deck.gl at my day job, and it's really cool to see how far people can push it. I have a random question - what layer are you…
thrway_blue123 on HNVery cool. I always used earth.nullschool.net to get a sense for global wind patterns; this uses a similar animation.
FredPret on HN
Useful for understanding wind generation
From 2 comments
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.
jeffwass on HNVery cool stuff! I love how you can see visually the impact they make when it's windy. (I'm sure I've seen something else (none map vis. though) with stuff like grid batteries…
sasquatch2000 on HN
Objections
Site went down under traffic from the Hacker News front page
From 2 comments
I'm afraid we killed it… I see just a gray base map and the browser is getting a "504 Gateway timeout" from the API: ``` This Serverless Function has timed out. Your connection…
helb on HNGetting {"error":"Missing generation data"} now
wjdp on HN
Generation figures can be inaccurate or misleading, e.g. Seagreen output
From 2 comments
Just wanted to say, as someone who works in the industry, wind FPNs are sometimes incorrect. Grid have access to "power available" signals, but this is not public data.
ourlordcaffeine on HNWhat's going on with Seagreen? It's got a forecast of 4MW, and a listed output of 545MW at roughly half capacity, in what seems like pretty light winds.
wiredfool on HN
Overstates fossil fuel share by lumping non-renewables together
From 1 comment
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…
limbicsystem on HN
Requests
Add solar generation data
From 1 comment
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.
jeffwass on HN
Add more countries
From 2 comments
Thanks for sharing! I'm looking to add more countries to the map so I'll dig into the data behind this one.
robhawkes on HNAwesome! Just wanted to say that I love what you're doing with GridStatus – I've been keeping an eye on your work on Twitter.
robhawkes on HN
Highlight selected wind farm instead of hiding others
From 1 comment
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.
flir on HN
Questions
Why some wind farms underperform their theoretical output
From 1 comment
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…
rmccue on HN
What altitude wind speeds are shown at
From 1 comment
I know wind varies a lot with altitude and there are a lot of available maps of wind such as 2m, 10m, 850mb, 250mb, etc. What altitude wind are you showing on the vis and what…
plopz on HN
Alternatives named
Electricity Maps
From 2 comments
There's a few like that but Electricity Maps is a good one https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
robhawkes on HNElectrictyMap.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…
toomuchtodo on HN
Grid Carbon Intensity (iamkate)
From 1 comment
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…
limbicsystem on HN
earth.nullschool.net
From 1 comment
Very cool. I always used earth.nullschool.net to get a sense for global wind patterns; this uses a similar animation.
FredPret on HN
GridStatus
From 1 comment
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/
kmax12 on HN
Sheffield Solar PV Live
From 1 comment
Here you go: https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/
robhawkes on HN