UK total wind generation record beaten today(renewables-map.robinhawkes.com)
33 pointsby martinald4 hours ago7 comments
  • robhawkesan hour ago
    Oh cool, that's my website! Let me know if you have any questions about it and I'll do my best to answer them.
    • countrymilean hour ago
      Great website! Can you describe the potential output? There is a little i sign but I can't click it on Firefox mobile.
      • robhawkesan hour ago
        Indeed! That's including available wind generation that was curtailed (not used) due to transmission constraints. So it's the actual output plus the amount of output that was "lost" because we had to switch off some wind farms, even though the wind was there to generate more.
        • ZeroGravitas28 minutes ago
          Apparently they've announced some plan to sell this power cheaply to local people on the same side of the bottleneck, though I've not seen the details yet.

          Seems to be another one of those sensible ideas that needs a global crisis to be pushed through to reality.

    • nheckeran hour ago
      (edit: I see you answered a sibling comment with the same question. TL;DR: Potential output is the output pretending that curtailment did not apply. Thanks!)

      A UI or terminology question: when 'Potential output' says it is 'Including curtailment', does this mean that it pretends that curtailment doesn't apply, or that it subtracts the curtailed power from the total available so that the total power shown is only the power actually transmitted (exported) to the grid? It's very likely that I'm just not familiar enough with the terms, but this wasn't immediately clear. My guess is the former meaning, although I can imagine it meaning either.

      Regardless, this is incredibly neat, and I'd love to see this kind of data for the grid that serves me (Eastern Interconnect in the US) -- are you aware of any sites similar?

      • toomuchtodoan hour ago
        > Regardless, this is incredibly neat, and I'd love to see this kind of data for the grid that serves me (Eastern Interconnect in the US) -- are you aware of any sites similar?

        https://app.electricitymaps.com/

        (for most US grids, ElectricityMaps consumes somewhat delayed EIA Balancing Agency generation mix data from https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr... ; their data is mostly live for system operators that provide live data on their own website, CAISO in California and ERCOT in Texas, for example)

  • nasretdinovan hour ago
    I must say it was quite windy for the last couple of days. When I say "quite windy" I mean I saw people saying they were blown off their bike :)
  • turkeywelder41 minutes ago
    Love your stuff Robin. The graphs and wind turbine model are particular favourites

    How can we fix the curtailment problem? Storage nearer the turbines or just more transmission capacity generally? I presume we'd saturate storage pretty quickly so is it just a case of running more grid wiring from Scotland to say.. Manchester?

    • robhawkes12 minutes ago
      Thanks! The ultimate fix is to finish upgrading the aging grid. There are other things that can improve the situation however, such as building wind farms away from these constraints, storage (but these can sometimes exacerbate constraints), demand flexibility (eg. place demand above constraints), zonal/regional pricing, and probably more I can't remember off the top of my head.

      The demand flexibility aspect is already being explored: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-i...

  • gotwaz3 hours ago
    Some context would make it more interesting. How much of it was used? How much does wind contribute to full day consumption?
    • wiredfoolan hour ago
      In Ireland, we’re running at about 75% renewables for the day, with most of that being wind. The absolute numbers are smaller, but that’s a peak of about 500 MW of solar and 3.6GW of wind, against something like 5-6Gw of demand.
    • robhawkesan hour ago
      I shed a little more light on the context via my map which you can also find linked on the page: https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com
    • toomuchtodoan hour ago
      Not to steal from Robin's excellent work, you can see how much it's been (low carbon/renewables generation) over the last twelve months at https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/GB/12mo/monthly (~56% renewables, ~73% low carbon)

      (Robin, if there is a way to see this on your site, I could not find it, my apologies!)

      • robhawkesan hour ago
        Not at all, my stuff is very niche and the other websites and dashboards do a much better job at filling in the higher-level context.
  • Sarkiean hour ago
    Congrats Robin.
    • robhawkesan hour ago
      Thanks! Always a surprise and a pleasure seeing my stuff on here
  • plodmanan hour ago
    And yet we’re about to face an eye watering increase in bills due to the way we’re charged for energy.