Electric Generation in Spain – Latest 24 Hours | Hacker News Reader

Electric Generation in Spain – Latest 24 Hours

energia.ningunaparte.net

131 pointsvinnyglennon54 comments

I think we killed it :( At least I don't get any data plotted anymore when loading the site.

I agree it's neat, but I dislike that the plot legend has the text at an angle with poor contrast and in the "wrong" order compared to the plot colors. I'd also like a better color scheme with more distinct colors. I'm also not s fan of fading out the colors with time.

Yup.

Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Same issue here on the latest version of Chrome. Seems our hug of death might have spread to the official data source too as I just get a blank page there as well.

It's working for me now, here is a screenshot incase it breaks again:

http://i.imgur.com/OKf65Me.jpg

Neat looking visualization. Sorry for the nitpick but personally a straight line (rather than circular) plot 00:00 - 24:00 will help see the peaks and compare high-low better. The time could you also show by time of generation rather than local. (it is weird to see peak solar at 0200 hrs )

This polar plot has a few things going for it. I disagree with what you said because I think this presentation more clearly shows the peak. The peak is the point where the colored area intersects the circumference. On a timeline you are forced to guess at the peak.

The other thing that's perfectly obvious on this graph is the comparison with 24 hours ago.

Personally I quite like the polar coordinates, though it's a pity that by convention, a watch face only holds half a day, as we would otherwise have a nice mapping of generation time to a watch-face equivalent.

My nitpick is that this is ultimately a stacked bar chart, so as with cartesian stacked charts, it obfuscates some of proportions, in particular the very interesting cyclicity of renewables. The author has wisely put the higher-variance variables first, mitigating the problem somewhat, but not completely, as can be seen by comparing to the gridwatch UK equivalent.

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

It's glitchy in Firefox. Here's the official real time graph https://demanda.ree.es/demandaGeneracionAreasEng.html

OP's one looks cool. But this one is a lot easier to understand.

"Alternate HTML content should be placed here. This content requires the Adobe Flash Player. Get Flash"

Not happening.

Flex - winning here.

Default styling can be spotted a million miles away

The equivalent for the UK: http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Very well done. Here is a similar thing for Ontario http://media.cns-snc.ca/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectricit...

Irish Dashboard here - http://smartgriddashboard.eirgrid.com/

Were you involved in building it? Nice.

Does the percentage of renewable generated (wind) go up a lot during the night?

No, we built a simple traffic light on top of it. [Red/Amber/Green] to indicate how much electricity is wind generated, and so if its a good time to charge your electric car, etc..

Down :(

edit hrm. Tis back now.

HN hug-of-death, maybe?

Most grid operators have displays like that. The California ISO has one.[1] PJM's is the most elaborate; search for "eData Guest view" to view it. It's too much information at first, but click on the "Big Picture" tab, then change one of the smaller panes to "Wind", and one to "Load", and you can see current load and how much wind power is contributing. Note the 5:1 variation in wind power over a day, across most of the northeastern US. "LMPs" shows the wholesale price of electricity at various points in the system. (It costs money to transmit power, so it's not the same everywhere.)

You can view the PJM's network issues by clicking on "Constraints" or "Emergencies". Typical message today: "As of 17:10 on 11.20.2015 a Post Contingency Local Load Relief Warning to maintain WARD 115 KV at 106 KV in the PN area has been issued for Transmission Contingency Control. Additional Comments: Pre-contingency voltage too high for caps at Mansfield and Niles Valley" Minor problem, already handled. If you really want to understand all this, PJM has lots of training materials. Start with "PJM 101".[2] Anyone running a big network or "cloud" may find it useful to see how a very large power grid is run. The main control room in Valley Forge, PA usually has less than 10 people.[3]

[1] http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html [2] http://pjm.com/Globals/Training/Courses/ol-pjm-101.aspx [3] http://www.elliottlewis.com/pjm-mission-critical-site/

It's a neat tool however please keep in mind that Spain is actually a very big importer of energy.

Earlier this year a major construction project has ended: a double 65km tunnel below the pyrenean of 1000MW capacity. It doubled the previous existing capacity.[1]

Spain is a very large importer of energy, ENTSOE data for October is 525GWh FR->ES [2] Since the energy mix of France is roughly 75% Nuclear, in reality Spain relies much heavily on nuclear than what is displayed.

Based on ENTSOE data, Fraunhoffer built another very nice data visualisation of import/export of electricity between Germany and its neighbours [3]

European electricity networks are very tightly interconnected, and although I don't have a source at hand, I remember being told that preventing a domino effect between countries has been a massive feat of engineering. Basically, the fear of every energy provider/network is something similar to the blackout that happenned in northern america in 2003[4]

As a side note does anyone know what "balearic exchange" refers to? I guess something the Baleares islands, but my google-fu failed me

[1] http://www.inelfe.eu/?Liaison-electrique-souterraine&lang=fr

[2] https://www.entsoe.eu/db-query/exchange/detailed-electricity...

[3] https://www.energy-charts.de/exchange.htm

[4] http://www.nature.com/news/is-the-us-grid-better-prepared-to...

I don't know anything myself, but interested trawling brought up this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cometa_(HVDC) which I imagine is the route, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_Network_of_the_Bal... which I imagine are the offshore sources, although it's all a bit out of date, no details about the overall exchange programme

The HVDC line between the mainland and Mallorca is used to send power to the Balearic Islands (the big ones being Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza). There's already a Mallorca-Menorca line, and they plan on building one to Ibiza.

Spain is a net exporter of electricity; its net exports were 3406 GWh in 2014 (vs. total consumption of 243,530 GWh). It imported 5963 GWh from France and sent 2395 GWh back; For Portugal it was 6345 GWh imported vs. 7247 exported, and there was an exportation of 5839 GWh to Morroco (vs. 3 GWh of importation).

Exports and Imports vary depending on the season. From January to April, when the most hydro power is produced, Spain is a net exporter to France and a net importer from Portugal. The rest of the year, the balance is mostly reversed. The export to Morroco is roughly stable all year.

In 2014, Spain's nuclear power plants produced 57,376 GWh. Assuming all energy imported from France (5963 GWh) was from nuclear plants, that would add 10.4% to nuclear-source electricity, for a total of 63,339 GWh, or 26% of consumption (vs. 23.6% if you don't count French imports).

Edit: source for all that: http://www.ree.es/es/publicaciones/sistema-electrico-espanol...

Didn't know that, thanks!

New Zealand power generation and transmission, live: http://www.em6live.co.nz

Shows a breakdown of how the energy is generated and where it is going.

same for germany here: https://www.energy-charts.de/power_de.htm

Select "alle Quellen" on the left side to get a finer breakdown and then "Import Saldo" on the top right for adjustment for imported or exported power.

The lack of solar is completely baffling. [EDIT] I was referring to solar on average.

Lack? It's around 10% during daytime

The times are presented in the viewer's local time. For me it looks like solar peaks in the middle of the night.

Oh, didn't realise since I'm in GMT+1 (actually, I'm in Spain, but well.) In any case, solar is pretty visible with the color choice and, well, it's actual presence.

I see a bit over 12% during a big part of the day. The yellow/orangeish part.

There is solar, but only during the hours when the sun is shining.

It's 9:30pm CET.

The sun set a while ago ...

Interesting that Hydro is dropping to almost zero at times. I would have though at least some of it would be always going to maintain flow of rivers etc.

You can just bypass the turbines to maintain the flow you want. That's one big advantages of Hydro: whether you have a run-of-the-river or a reservoir plant, you can adjust your power output to the demand very quickly.

In the official graph it actually goes negative.

Probably because of pumped storage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...

It's possible that this is pumped storage. A lot of hydro stations are demand-based, they're used to compensate for renewables. So in the graph I would interpret that as the reservoirs being refilled during periods of low demand (the amount of electricity this takes is a lot). From the official REE graph it looks like pumping usually takes place overnight and is powered by nuclear.

https://demanda.ree.es/demandaGeneracionAreasEng.html

If you look at this report, you can see in the annual report that pumping 'costs' around 6GW a year.

http://www.ree.es/sites/default/files/downloadable/prelimina...

We took it out. Can anyone share a cached copy ?

Well, at least this is the official data portal of the Spanish grid: https://www.esios.ree.es/en if someone is interested.

How can there be solar at 21.15 GMT+1? Even if just 0.30%. Is this from the accumulated residual during the day?

Concentration solar... It melts salt that still provides energy for a few hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_solar_power_plant

wiki says they're using superheated water for storage, lasting 30mins and the salts are under consideration - sounds like a serious improvement, do you have more info?

Click through the list of solar power plants, In particular I found this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Pr...

> Melting about 70,000,000 pounds (32,000,000 kg) of salt takes two months.

I find it so awesome that some days 50% of the electricity comes from wind... Just great. A good example.

If you had to pay one of the world's most expensive electricity bills, I guess you wouldn't find it so awesome.

Depends how expensive it is comparatively, since the outcome is a good one.

That appears to be down to weird non-marginal pricing: http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/01/01/inenglish/1388590410_230...

The wind energy itself is cheap, but all producers are paid at the cost of the most expensive dispatch!

Can someone explain "special scheme"?

Google suggest biomass and other biofuels. Perhaps also trash burning?

I think it refers to the rest of the production that is done under the "Régimen Especial": https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9gimen_Especial_de_energ...

The scheme includes energy generated from waste, biomass, hydro, wind, solar and co-generation. Since hydro, wind, solar have their own categories, that part of the graph would correspond to waste, biomass and co-generation.

It may include everything, though, because the scheme only applies to installation of less than 50 MW: http://www.endesadistribucion.es/es/oficinaOnline/RegimenEsp...

So a micro hydro plant or a rooftop solar installation would be counted under the special scheme.

I have new clock

Reply on news.ycombinator.com