robhawkes

6 ms·

1. 1.▲
   by robhawkes 5mo ago

   The link shows a photo of my grandad with the original R2-D2 he built for the first Star Wars film… Jack was a master sheet metal worker, and was roped into using his skills on an obscure project to turn the sketches for the droid into some
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   My grandad built the original R2-D2 for the first Star Wars film(twitter.com)

   4 points by robhawkes 5mo ago|2 comments
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   by robhawkes 6mo ago

   Those are NESO (system operator) grid boundaries. The colours represent the forecast flow of energy over each boundary in relation to the capacity of each boundary. Green means lots of extra capacity, red means over capacity. When a boundar
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   by robhawkes 6mo 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)
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   by robhawkes 6mo ago

   Yup! Looks like it'll be some form of regional demand flexibility, similar to what suppliers like Octopus Energy (disclaimer: my employer) and others have experimented with over the past few years. https://www.gov.uk/go
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   by robhawkes 6mo 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.
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   by robhawkes 6mo 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
8. 8.▲
   by robhawkes 6mo 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
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   by robhawkes 6mo ago

   Thanks! Always a surprise and a pleasure seeing my stuff on here
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    by robhawkes 6mo 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.
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Thanks!
12. 12.▲
    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    That's correct, it's using data from Open Infrastructure Map which is itself based on OpenStreetMap data. That's a good idea to zoom in further to show them off a bit more.
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Oh wow that's a blast from the past, feels like a lifetime ago! And thank you.
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Ah yeah the FAQ is very out of date and in need of a full rewrite. I'll get to that eventually. And you're right, I'll make sure to add some sort of glossary and perhaps also explain things better in-situ.
15. 15.▲
    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Thanks! I would love to make this something that works beyond GB though right now that would require a fundamental change to the way things are set up. It's on my list though, so one day.
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    I actually have plans to include Ireland and Northern Ireland once I get the GB side nailed down. The data seems to be mostly available though I'd have to really think about how to make it work well on the app as it'd be a pretty
17. 17.▲
    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    I'll make sure to get the about page updated soon, it's been a bit neglected with being so focussed on the recent upgrades. Definitely a lot I can explain better, and also ways that I can solve that with better UX in general.
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Yup, that's exactly it! When you zoom in you get to see the wind farms and wind turbines using data from the amazing Open Infrastructure Map [0]. I also show the cables for the offshore wind farms. [0] https://openinframap.o
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Tech stack is a mix of things, but the big-ticket items: - Dagster for data pipeline - Parquet files for data format - Cloudflare R2 for data storage - DuckDB for data processing - NodeJS for API - NextJS + React for the app - MapLibre for
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    The lines are sort of arbitrary in a geographic sense as in reality they are defined based on the intersection with the schematic version of the transmission network [0]. Though yeah, that specific example is an odd one and I'd be inte
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    No worries. The Detailed System Prices dataset is lagged by a couple hours so try going back in time. The simplest answer I can give is that assets place bids and a volume of energy that they are willing to turn down if the system operator
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Yup! I have two ways to do it right now, the first is to click the plug-looking button on the map and this'll switch into curtailment mode to filter the assets that are currently being turned down due to transmission constraints, as we
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    The most time and energy has been getting my head around the source data [0] and industry-specific nuances. In terms of stack I have a self-hosted Dagster [1] data pipeline that periodically dumps the data onto Cloudflare R2 as parquet file
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Hey! And thank you 1) Absolutely agree. The current approach for the boundaries is a quick hack until I can implement something more sophisticated. Safe to say an update is already in the works that adds a MW value and more insight into the
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Thank you
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Some solar power assets are being tracked though unfortunately (for now) I'm only able to display data for assets that report on the balancing system in Great Britain. This means most solar has no data that I can easily access. I hope
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Semi-related: I also have a page where you can track the wind records as they happen https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/records
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Definitely wind roses planned, I posted about them on my LinkedIn page if anyone is curious (linked on the main map). That's a great point about the controls. Originally the map only showed wind farms and as I've expanded the feat
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    The squiggly ones across the country? Those are the National Energy System Operator (NESO) transmission boundaries for Great Britain. They represent areas of the country that are tracked for the purposes of managing constraints, which is wh
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    by robhawkes 7mo ago

    Oh wow, I made this! I didn't expect to see my map on here Let me know if you have any questions or feedback and I'll do my best to respond to them.