UK electricity grid dashboard

Post by **mikepepler** » 03 Apr 2013, 14:22

Interesting site with live UK electricity data here. There's also graphs for day/week/month/year and a CSV download of all the data for a few years (16MB).
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php

extractorfan · Post by **extractorfan** » 03 Apr 2013, 14:58

Potemkin Villager · Post by **Potemkin Villager** » 03 Apr 2013, 19:25

I have looked high and low but I cannot find PV anywhere!

Would love to hear some suggestions as to what we are going to replace coal with as all the renewables seem to have precisely zero impact on it.

Post by **clv101** » 03 Apr 2013, 20:50

Potemkin Villager wrote:Would love to hear some suggestions as to what we are going to replace coal with...

Why replace it?

Look at the chart for the last week. Demand peaks at around 45-50GW on weekday evenings. The interesting thing is that the demand bottoms out at around 30GW early Sunday morning.

Coal has been generating a fairly steady 15GW. I say we half that 30GW of Sunday morning demand... and not just for Sunday morning but all the time. Our 30GW of background demand is crazy.

The daily cycle from minimum to maximum is only ~15GW, a small amount on the huge background.

Potemkin Villager · Post by **Potemkin Villager** » 03 Apr 2013, 21:04

clv101 wrote:
I say we half that 30GW of Sunday morning demand... and not just for Sunday morning but all the time. Our 30GW of background demand is crazy.

I agree Chris but in your dreams......... there is the small matter
of how this could be achieved and how to keep the system frequency
steady. All sorts of strange things start happening when the frequency starts wobbling..... for one thing wind farms start tripping out!

Oh yes and I still cannot find PV anywhere!

extractorfan · Post by **extractorfan** » 03 Apr 2013, 21:33

I sometimes pop into work on a weekend, to pick some paperwork up or whatever. Recently I went into the server room to run a manual backup of one of the datasets, there are 4 servers of ours and 6 servers of another company all whirring away, 24/7, unnecessarily. This must be repeated across thousands of sme's across hundreds of countries.

Pointless waste of energy.

Suggesting these things are switched off is met with incredulity because of the (minor) delay experienced when starting the things up on Monday morning.

The cost of electricity is too cheap yet to warrant efficiency measures. I find this really annoying, as annoying as people throwing away perfectly good office equipment.

There's so much we could do, but won't.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 03 Apr 2013, 21:58

Potemkin Villager wrote: I agree Chris but in your dreams......... there is the small matter
of how this could be achieved and how to keep the system frequency
steady.

That is indeed a small matter and easily solved. Global warming resulting from burning carbon is vastly more problematic, even existential. For Jordan it's just a matter of paying the bills. Here's Jordan doing it's bit to reduce electricity demand:

Lights go out in Jordan as energy crisis bites

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/ ... NC20130403

Post by **clv101** » 03 Apr 2013, 22:27

extractorfan wrote:The cost of electricity is too cheap yet to warrant efficiency measures. I find this really annoying, as annoying as people throwing away perfectly good office equipment.

There's so much we could do, but won't.

Indeed- the fact that we use 30GW at 4:30am on a Sunday morning... and only another 15GW at peak time is a clear indication that electricity is too cheap.

Post by **adam2** » 04 Apr 2013, 08:52

Potemkin Villager wrote:I have looked high and low but I cannot find PV anywhere!

Would love to hear some suggestions as to what we are going to replace coal with as all the renewables seem to have precisely zero impact on it.

AFAIK there is no detailed record of PV electricity production because most installations are very small and not monitored in real time.
Figures must exist somwhere for PV production per month or year, but not in real time.
Most meters for small premises are only read a few times a year.

The information linked to will not be totally accurate, since the total demand is in fact the NET demand after subtracting small scale generation such as domestic scale wind and solar.
Large scale wind power is as reported, but small scale grid tied wind is not recorded, it is simply subtracted from the load.

Post by **clv101** » 04 Apr 2013, 09:19

For real time PV output you're better to just multiply the known installed capacity and location by real time weather information.

Tarrel · Post by **Tarrel** » 04 Apr 2013, 09:50

clv101 wrote:
Potemkin Villager wrote:Would love to hear some suggestions as to what we are going to replace coal with...
Why replace it?

Look at the chart for the last week. Demand peaks at around 45-50GW on weekday evenings. The interesting thing is that the demand bottoms out at around 30GW early Sunday morning.

Coal has been generating a fairly steady 15GW. I say we half that 30GW of Sunday morning demand... and not just for Sunday morning but all the time. Our 30GW of background demand is crazy.

The daily cycle from minimum to maximum is only ~15GW, a small amount on the huge background.

I raised the same point (about the base load) a couple of weeks ago on Biff's thread, also linking to the dashboard. Adam2 made some informative comments about some of the base load being due to off-peak space heating, water heating, etc. i guess this is a good thing, as it does even out the peaks and troughs of demand. However, I'm still sure we could make very simple changes in order to reduce the background demand. Lighting is the first thing that comes to mind. For example, my local Tesco has its car-park lit 24 hours a day. It also has two large, illuminated "Tesco" signs, at least 2m x 8m, no doubt full of flourescent tubes, also lit 24/7. Then there's the street-lighting, shop display windows, etc.

I agree; electricity is basically too cheap to facilitate behaviour-change at the moment.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 04 Apr 2013, 10:30

I'd've wrote:I agree; fossil fuel is basically too cheap to facilitate behaviour-change at the moment.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 04 Apr 2013, 10:55

My pv system generated 26kW hours yesterday.

Tarrel · Post by **Tarrel** » 04 Apr 2013, 13:09

emordnilap wrote:
I'd've wrote:I agree; fossil fuel is basically too cheap to facilitate behaviour-change at the moment.

Actually E, I think I stick to my original comment. We're not going to successfully make the switch away from fossil fuels unless we seriously start to reduce our energy consumption, whatever its source. Unfortunately, in the BAU world, money talks. So I believe it will take a serious price-hike to change behaviour, as it's done with smoking and, to some extent, petrol prices. The problem, of course, is this would penalise the modest users of electricity, as well as those who squander.

Tarrel · Post by **Tarrel** » 04 Apr 2013, 13:10

biffvernon wrote:My pv system generated 26kW hours yesterday.

Impressive! What size installation do you have?