U.K. National Grid status
gridwatch.templar.co.uk
gridwatch.templar.co.uk
It looks like France is exporting to neighbouring european countries (including to the UK), the equivalent more than the UK's total current nuclear supply (~7.89GW).
I had no idea it was possible to transport such power by submarine link (2GW power to the UK).
Remember it's only 34 kilometres between the closest points. The current inter-connector is currently 70km, with the planned second connector longer at 230km (but with a reduced capacity of 1 GW)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Cross-Channel
http://www2.nationalgrid.com/About-us/European-business-deve...
From the report:
"Germany and the UK are the self-declared climate champions of the EU. However, Germany uses more coal to generate electricity than any other EU country, while the UK comes third in absolute coal consumption for power after Poland;"
Here's the 10 most co2-polluting thermal power plants in the EU according to the report
1. Bełchatów, Poland
2. Neurath, Germany
3. Niederaussem, Germany
4. Jänschwalde, Germany
5. Boxberg, Germany
6. Drax, United Kingdom
7. Weisweiler, Germany
8. Agios Dimitrios, Greece
9. Brindisi Sud, Italy
10. Lippendorf, Germany
Or you can read the summary from this Guardian report http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/22/germany-u...
We scrape power and gas data from various sources - we are also working on to get fertlizers , bio fuels and other data from across globe.
As I write this, it appears that the UK grid is running around 30GW, of which about 55% comes from local fossil fuels, 29% nuclear, nearly 10% imported from France and Holland, and a mere 5% or so from the major (non-nuclear) renewable sources.
There is an interesting note that coal (only 15% right now) is still the largest contributor to the UK grid overall, but used more in winter because running hours are restricted for environmental reasons so they do more in winter when it's more profitable.
I am surprised (and, honestly, disappointed) to see that so little of the total is still drawn from clean, renewable sources after all the concern about both fossil fuel supplies and environmental effects in recent years. Having just been on holiday to a country not a million miles away where they have essentially no native fossil fuels and so almost everything is run on relatively clean renewables, it's clear that we still have a long way to go.
Try and put up a new onshore wind farm anywhere in the UK, and every NIMBY and countryside group for a hundred miles will turn up to complain. Propose a new nuclear power station, and it'll be 200 miles, even though not far away in continental Europe there are nuclear power stations that could pose just as big a threat here if anything catastrophic happened. No doubt the same people will be the first to complain if they can't afford a guaranteed 100% electricity supply and have to put up with rolling blackouts in a decade or two. (If you're in the UK, I encourage you to do the maths and consider the geopolitical situation; that isn't as implausible a future as we'd all like to believe.)
Meanwhile, it looks like Wikipedia has several whole articles about the remarkable achievements of the Icelandic in this area (though I think the figures we heard while there were actually slightly better than even what is cited there):
The data seem to be a few minutes old, and doesn't have history (which would be nice).
It can also be easier/cheaper to import power for one point near the border than transport it from farther production facilities.
In a connected power system, if power 'needs' to get from A to B, it won't only flow through the direct connection, but along the longer loops as well, which often creates 'transit'. For example, in that map from NO5 to SE5 through Denmark, and from NO1 to NO3 through Sweden. This is normal and pretty much unavoidable - it's more efficient to optimize the flows to reduce total system losses, and then just try to bill everyone fairly.
You can't simply set a specific flow amount (well, you can force it to 0) to some country and keeep it there without mucking up the rest of the system, unless high voltage DC links are used to connect separate power systems.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/stories/people/teatime...
Otherwise, a generator that lags in phase becomes a motor.
Part of the problem is lower frequencies don't meet as much impedence in inductors (e.g., transformers), and another part is that interconnects can have control system stability problems keeping them synced.
The other cool thing about AC power is that you can send power based on the relative phase of a node on the grid. This means that a node at a lower AC voltage can send power to another node at a higher voltage by adjusting the relative phase. Mostly this is done by switching capacitor banks at various transmission nodes to adjust the reactive power component at that node.
The grid time is itself an interesting concept. Because the grid runs at a known frequency, it's possible to use it as a time base for a clock. The grid time is considered to be the current time for such a clock. It basically integrates the grid frequency error over time.
Regarding generators that lag the grid, it's not quite as simple as generators turning into motors. The generators all have real time governors that adjust their throttles based on their current operating speed. (The operating speed is directly linked to their operating frequency, for the vast majority of units.) In the case of a generator operating too slowly, the governor immediately requests more input power to compensate. Because this happens grid-wide, this gives the entire grid the ability to quickly respond to short-term fluctuations in operating frequency. Longer term frequency response is handled by dispatching individual units up and down to balance power and load.
In the event that a generator cannot adequately respond, it will trip (shut down) and disconnect from the grid entirely. This is a protective measure that keeps the generator from skipping cycles. (You can think of this as the electrical equivalent of gears skipping teeth, and can be hugely destructive to the equipment.)
Is it actually up to date and accurate?
I wonder if wind player a major role somewhere where they really have a lot of turbines. Like Netherlands or Germany perhaps.
Would be really interesting to be able to compare different countries with the same sort of data.
Hydroelectric is currently the only economical "grid-scale battery", and it is not available everywhere.
Wondering about history and raw data sets.
Excellent looking site for getting students interested in stuff like power generation
and total demand is here: http://www.eirgrid.com/operations/systemperformancedata/syst...
Its pretty much real time data that can be used for trading on the electricity market.
(Very interesting page. Thanks.)