When looking at France, at a zoom level where one can see the whole country, all the green dots are located next to nuclear power plants. It's a good reminder that the french grid is mostly powered by nuclear.
It'd be nice to see the same map over summer to see if the different electric mix then gives birth to a different map.
if it wasn't for France having primarily used nuclear power decades ago, Europe as a whole would be in a much much worse state when it comes to CO2 emissions. That makes it abundantly clear that nuclear needs to be a part of the mix when it comes to non-emission generating energy production.
France has 12% of Europe's population, and its primary energy is 45% from fossil fuels and 40% from nuclear power. The effect on Europe as a whole is therefore pretty small.
I think you included transportation in your stats: planes, cars, trucks and boats. The electrical mix in France includes only 8% from fossil fuels, of which 7% come from natural gas. The rest is mostly nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar. In that order.
France also regularly sells its surplus to neighboring countries.
> France also regularly sells its surplus to neighboring countries.
And in order to do that it has pretty massive lines to neighbours meaning it also acts as an exchange platform (for a profit) e.g. if there are strong winds it can buy electricity from an oversupplied german grid and sell it to italy.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/24h provides live views of the european electricity grids, and France is the only country which is consistently green (and often dark green aka under 50gCO2eq/kWh) without being blessed with enough hydro for most or all of its requirements (as Iceland and Norway are).
New renewable installations are getting cheaper, but are still far from being numerous enough to overcome their terrible load factor and enable switching off some baseline production plants. And storage at a grid level is pretty much inexistant, except for a couple of pumped hydro plants.
There is a significant mismatch between reality and the kind of headlines we see in tech-focused media. These hype future products as if they were already widely available, which creates a false idea of the actual situation in the real world.
What storage are you referring too? I see residential ones in houses but absolutely nothing of state-scale, which is necessary to keep industries and services running.
Materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket. We’re still to see the renewables going further than the residential proof of concept on a society scale.
The CAISO (California Independent System Operator) grid is a good example of large scale battery use (1). Texas is also seeing a ramp up of battery storage (2).
Whilst battery demand will increase it's expected costs will continue to decrease - "Innovation reduces total capital costs of battery storage by up to 40% in the power sector by 2030 in the Stated Policies Scenario"(3)
> Materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket.
We haven't even specified what kind of storage technology we're talking about yet you already state that "materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket". Are you referring to batteries? There are countless other technologies to "store" energy.
I have no clew how come the difference on what's usually said on this forum and the situation in Europe.My only understanding is that the US as whole is more sunny that gives a better ratio solar panel and produced electricity.
Maybe also it's a provider thing ? From country to country, you can always have things that seem randomly more expensive. Germany is more renewable but more expensive than France, is it because of their national company is benefiting citizen properly or is it because the remaining gas part drives up the cost ?
> Germany is more renewable but more expensive than France
No, germany is more renewable but it's also more coal, any time there's no wind the coal plants start up. And they burn lignite (because that's what in germany e.g. that's what the Baggers strip mine).
It's not as bad as Poland which basically runs entirely off of coal, but it's absolutely at the bottom of the european barrel.
Also electricity storage still isn't much of a thing (and while germany has two pumped hydro station they have very little capacity), so in periods of high winds germany actually pays its neighbours to take electricity off its grid so it doesn't collapse (at this point it has hundreds of hours of negative spot prices every year).
Which is getting problematic because increase in wind generation in said neighbours means the issue is spreading as they too need to get rid of their wind production at those times.
The comment I replied to is comparing germany to france. The map I linked literally tells you that in 2024 Germany generated 370g CO2 equivalent per kWh, where France generated 32, that's an objective number you can straight up read.
Yes Germany is 58% renewable versus France's 28 (something the map also tells you), but then 30% are gas and especially coal, the link you provide agrees with that. Coal is insanely polluting, especially because Germany mainly uses lignite which is the least energy rich coal (so even more emissions for the same production), coal represents >3/4th of its emissions.
Meanwhile gas is a minor component of france's electricity mix (pretty much just peaking plants and a few combined cycle district heating plants) and coal is a rounding error.
Germany may use more renewables in volume, but it is absolutely dirtier than in France. Their electrical mix makes use of lots of natural gas and lignite coal, the worst kind, both expensive and very dirty.
Rome wasn't built in a day and I find it hilarious to advocate for nuclear power instead, if the average construction time (not even taking into account the prior mountain of bureaucracy) is over a decade. Not a single nuclear power plant built in past 15 years in Europe has been on time or on budget. Not even close.
You can say whatever you want when discussion the cost of nuclear in France because of the structure of its nuclear industry. Part of it comes from the government’s budget, so depending on your point of view it can be accounted for differently. Then, there are externalities (pollution, greenhouse gases, etc). And then there are strategic aspects and associated costs. The alternative in the 1970s was skyrocketing oil, which is much more costly at the planet’s level, and was on track to be much more costly at the country’s level as well. And in the meantime, consumers got reasonably cheap and clean electricity for decades.
Skimming your source, I would not trust it very much.
someone could calculate the savings in CO2 emissions over all the power generated by nuclear energy each year in France, since the power stations were built, vs coal plants (which would have been the alternative at the time)
I get irrationally angry when a map is skewed in this way and there is no way to change it. The more you zoom in, the worse the distortion is made to be. Even zooming all the way out does not eliminate the angular distortion. This took actual effort on some programmer's part! Who ever thought that this is a good idea?!?
It's like those navigational mini maps (car or computer game) that won't keep north pointing up... only worse.
Don't get angry so much over minor things, your older self will thank you. Somebody did something for free, gave it to you for free, and so they did not do a perfect job. There are worse things in life.
Something I've wondered for a while: if the whole continent is on a synchronized grid, how can countries tell to or from whom they're exporting and importing electricity. I can see how they can measure their total imports or exports by comparing generation to consumption, but how do they figure out which neighbour they're getting electricity from / sending it to?
(Russia is another big chunk of Europe but not included in the above map, though I think it may be the same grid with the Baltics)
For the question, measuring the flow of electricity is just normal power engineering, your home electricity meter does it as well. It's not so much the countries doing it though.
February 8th, 2025. Power is currently not exchanged, only synchronization services. All of the hardware necessary on the Baltic side has been commissioned and is preparing to operate. Why synchronous condensers were selected versus battery storage (which can provide the same ancillary grid support services), I cannot say.
You can measure the flow of power by calculating the vector product of the current and voltage in the power line. EEVblog has a very good explanation video how this is done in an (analog) domestic watt-hour meter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_3DXcB9-xE
There are five synchronous areas in Europe, the largest one being the synchronous grid of continental Europe [1].
Each national grids has interconnections with other grids and you can measure the flow of power through these interconnections to know who is sending electricity or getting electricity from neighbours.
And it's not the same, so sometimes there is just "transit", although transit here should I guess be understood very loosely. I also assume they just know who paid for what.
Edit: although upon re-reading I think you probably asked something else. Sorry in that case.
Seeing current flow through switches isn't the same as seeing specifically where your power is coming from.
Like, if power from several different sources flows into a single substation before it goes to your home, you know exactly which source created the electricity you're using?
And if I purchase power from a 100% renewable company, is it always only electricity from their generators, never ever mixed in with power from other grid sources during downtime?
No, it's just best estimates based on generation, consumption and flow.
That's like taking a bucket of water out of the ocean and saying you know where it came from. Sure, it might have come from the nearest estuary, but odds are it got mixed in with water that originated somewhere else.
Electricity transmission is a bit like water pressure and distribution. You're not going to get the same electrons (or water molecules) that you subscribed to from various producers in the distribution network put in, the flow causality and the physical embodiments of production are different though related things.
two different things; electricitymaps.com is a much more macro view, nice for looking at inter-country flows, whereas this one is great for looking at individual generation points and flows
Copper Sushi doesn't load for me, but I'm wondering how it is going to beat the awesome electricitymaps. They have all the data and quite a good viewer.
It shows a much finer grained representation of the whole transportation network. So you have much better idea of where is electricity produced and consumed within each country.
When it comes to figuring out what the electricity mix is made of, electricitymaps is clearer.
If you are a regular HN reader who is (or was until this post) unfamiliar with Back to the Future, I'd love to know three more random facts about your life. In my world view, you are part of a fascinatingly small group of people.
Part 3 came out in 1990. So, anyone born after (less than 34 years old) who didn't bother to go back and watch it, would be sufficient? I'm familiar with the series' existence, but had no idea what 1.21 reference was. AMA, hah.
Since the franchise hasn't been rebooted like so many others, it hasn't seem the $$$ marketing that would introduce it to new generations.
Like The Princess Bride or Labyrinth, BTTF currently remains a phenomenom of the 80's and 90's -- familiar to most from that time and deeply treasured by some, but not refreshed and sustained the way the Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel/DC, etc brands have been.
I’ve been on the BTTF ride at… wherever in Florida it is, and I loved that as a teenager. The films just never really appealed though for some reason. I guess one related fact would be I have a lot of gaps like that in the movies I have seen. For instance, people are often shocked that I’ve never see any of the Indiana Jones movies (also loved the rides!); but Star Wars I could probably recite the scripts of.
I don’t think I have any other facts that are very interesting, but then again I didn’t think not having seen BTTF was all that interesting either. For the record I was familiar with 1.21GW and what it related to… I don’t live under a rock!
I have kids that are in their late 20s. They never watch older movies unless someone forces them to. There is so much new media coming out that they don’t feel the need to watch older movies, even if everyone is telling them it is very good.
One observation I could make from the visualization is that major cities have very big power generation centers, despite that they seem to be drawing power from surrounding areas. It is very apparent near London. I guess it is obvious that bigger cities have more demand from both industrial and residential consumption.
> TL;DR: we can delete most of the emissions of the developed world today by switching heating & car and truck transport to electrical - if we make sure we generate all electricity with near-zero emissions. Just building more renewable generation won't solve it though, as you still need to make sure it covers all consumption everywhere. This map intends to show why that's a complicated problem, and why we should also be smart about where we build renewable generation so that most of the generated energy can also be used and not thrown away because the grid can't handle it.
This is what I wonder about when I drive through West Texas and see massive wind farms in the middle of nowhere.
Heating and transport are the easiest in that regard. Most trucks drive during the day have the driver resting during the night. At night there's little demand, but wind and nuclear continue generating, so from a grid standpoint that's the perfect time to charge all the trucks. Cars can similarly be mostly charged during the night, as that's when they are at home. Heat demand is more variable, but heat is much easier to store than electricity itself. Everyone with a boiler already has a heat store at home. If you make the boiler a bit larger you can configure it to only heat when there's excess electricity (typically the night or at peak solar power around noon). And that's before you start with more efficient heat storage devices, like heating sand instead of water.
All of those solutions require infrastructure investments and smarter grids (likely with real-time pricing to incentivize consumers to use power when there's an excess, and an API so devices like chargers and boilers can act on this information without user input). But they don't require power storage at the grid level.
Impressive - Norway and Sweden are exporting ~6GW right now with Finland throwing in for another GW.
Probably contributing to the high percentage of EV sales. In Finland 90% of new vehicle sales are EVs. Sweden and Norway are at ~%60, and have a greater share of PHEVs.
"EVs, they're gonna be a bloodbath" and "they don't work in the cold", indeed /s
Never seems to occur to people that "I don't ever have to stand outside in the cold pumping gas into my car" and "I can have my car warmed up by the time I get in to go somewhere" are really popular features.
Also, they didn't build out their EV charging infrastructure via legal settlement, leading to having chargers owned and operated by a company ambivalent about maintenance and repair.
Europe as a whole is 24%, rising at a good clip. Also surprising is Romania - ahead of everyone except the Scandinavian countries and way, way ahead of all the former soviet states.
Thats why the more decentralized the more resilient. No single point of failure, redundancy in routing. Ahh, yes. just like the internet used to be :-)
When looking at France, at a zoom level where one can see the whole country, all the green dots are located next to nuclear power plants. It's a good reminder that the french grid is mostly powered by nuclear.
It'd be nice to see the same map over summer to see if the different electric mix then gives birth to a different map.
if it wasn't for France having primarily used nuclear power decades ago, Europe as a whole would be in a much much worse state when it comes to CO2 emissions. That makes it abundantly clear that nuclear needs to be a part of the mix when it comes to non-emission generating energy production.
France has 12% of Europe's population, and its primary energy is 45% from fossil fuels and 40% from nuclear power. The effect on Europe as a whole is therefore pretty small.
You're not counting the energy outflows from France to neighboring countries.
Also, France gets 70% of its energy from nuclear, not 40%.
> Also, France gets 70% of its energy from nuclear, not 40%.
No, it gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear.
France is simultaneously one of the most populated countries in the EU and the of the top transitioned countries, it does make a difference
I think you included transportation in your stats: planes, cars, trucks and boats. The electrical mix in France includes only 8% from fossil fuels, of which 7% come from natural gas. The rest is mostly nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar. In that order.
France also regularly sells its surplus to neighboring countries.
> France also regularly sells its surplus to neighboring countries.
And in order to do that it has pretty massive lines to neighbours meaning it also acts as an exchange platform (for a profit) e.g. if there are strong winds it can buy electricity from an oversupplied german grid and sell it to italy.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/24h provides live views of the european electricity grids, and France is the only country which is consistently green (and often dark green aka under 50gCO2eq/kWh) without being blessed with enough hydro for most or all of its requirements (as Iceland and Norway are).
Not sure if that still holds true nowadays with renewable energy and storage having got cheaper and cheaper.
New renewable installations are getting cheaper, but are still far from being numerous enough to overcome their terrible load factor and enable switching off some baseline production plants. And storage at a grid level is pretty much inexistant, except for a couple of pumped hydro plants.
There is a significant mismatch between reality and the kind of headlines we see in tech-focused media. These hype future products as if they were already widely available, which creates a false idea of the actual situation in the real world.
Britain has switched off its coal plants.
At least some of that is surely because of renewable power, mostly wind.
And because solar and wind power boost sales of gas turbine power plants that can spin fast enough to react for the wind and solar instability
What storage are you referring too? I see residential ones in houses but absolutely nothing of state-scale, which is necessary to keep industries and services running.
Materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket. We’re still to see the renewables going further than the residential proof of concept on a society scale.
God bless plutonium.
The CAISO (California Independent System Operator) grid is a good example of large scale battery use (1). Texas is also seeing a ramp up of battery storage (2).
Whilst battery demand will increase it's expected costs will continue to decrease - "Innovation reduces total capital costs of battery storage by up to 40% in the power sector by 2030 in the Stated Policies Scenario"(3)
1. https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso?date=2024-11-27 2. https://modoenergy.com/research/ercot-battery-energy-storage... 3. https://www.iea.org/reports/batteries-and-secure-energy-tran...
> Materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket.
We haven't even specified what kind of storage technology we're talking about yet you already state that "materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket". Are you referring to batteries? There are countless other technologies to "store" energy.
Eh… plutonium? I think uranium is the usual choice.
Home batteries can be part of a grid level response but this is nascent.
The result speaks for themselves, Germany still hasn't reached France 90s levels of emissions.
I have no clew how come the difference on what's usually said on this forum and the situation in Europe.My only understanding is that the US as whole is more sunny that gives a better ratio solar panel and produced electricity.
Maybe also it's a provider thing ? From country to country, you can always have things that seem randomly more expensive. Germany is more renewable but more expensive than France, is it because of their national company is benefiting citizen properly or is it because the remaining gas part drives up the cost ?
> Germany is more renewable but more expensive than France
No, germany is more renewable but it's also more coal, any time there's no wind the coal plants start up. And they burn lignite (because that's what in germany e.g. that's what the Baggers strip mine).
As a consequence, Germany's electricity emissions are absolute garbage: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE/12mo
It's not as bad as Poland which basically runs entirely off of coal, but it's absolutely at the bottom of the european barrel.
Also electricity storage still isn't much of a thing (and while germany has two pumped hydro station they have very little capacity), so in periods of high winds germany actually pays its neighbours to take electricity off its grid so it doesn't collapse (at this point it has hundreds of hours of negative spot prices every year).
Which is getting problematic because increase in wind generation in said neighbours means the issue is spreading as they too need to get rid of their wind production at those times.
> No, germany is more renewable but it's also more coal, any time there's no wind the coal plants start up.
Hm. The actual facts say otherwise, though: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...
So number go DOWN, not up, is what I'm seeing.
> Hm. The actual facts say otherwise
They don't.
> So number go DOWN, not up, is what I'm seeing.
The comment I replied to is comparing germany to france. The map I linked literally tells you that in 2024 Germany generated 370g CO2 equivalent per kWh, where France generated 32, that's an objective number you can straight up read.
Yes Germany is 58% renewable versus France's 28 (something the map also tells you), but then 30% are gas and especially coal, the link you provide agrees with that. Coal is insanely polluting, especially because Germany mainly uses lignite which is the least energy rich coal (so even more emissions for the same production), coal represents >3/4th of its emissions.
Meanwhile gas is a minor component of france's electricity mix (pretty much just peaking plants and a few combined cycle district heating plants) and coal is a rounding error.
Germany may use more renewables in volume, but it is absolutely dirtier than in France. Their electrical mix makes use of lots of natural gas and lignite coal, the worst kind, both expensive and very dirty.
Compare to the PAST, not the present! As you can see, the trend is downwards and steadily at that: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...
Rome wasn't built in a day and I find it hilarious to advocate for nuclear power instead, if the average construction time (not even taking into account the prior mountain of bureaucracy) is over a decade. Not a single nuclear power plant built in past 15 years in Europe has been on time or on budget. Not even close.
> As you can see, the trend is downwards and steadily at that
Lignite numbers:
2019: 114TWh, 18.7%
2020: 92TWh, 16%
2021: 110TWh, 18.8%
2022: 116TWh, 20%
2023: 88TWh, 17%
I've seen steadier terminal alcoholics.
Energiewende didnt start in 1973, it was first authorized in late 2010.
France's nuclear program was also very, very expensive: https://www.i-sis.org.uk/The_True_Costs_of_French_Nuclear_Po...
You can say whatever you want when discussion the cost of nuclear in France because of the structure of its nuclear industry. Part of it comes from the government’s budget, so depending on your point of view it can be accounted for differently. Then, there are externalities (pollution, greenhouse gases, etc). And then there are strategic aspects and associated costs. The alternative in the 1970s was skyrocketing oil, which is much more costly at the planet’s level, and was on track to be much more costly at the country’s level as well. And in the meantime, consumers got reasonably cheap and clean electricity for decades.
Skimming your source, I would not trust it very much.
Any data on how much France has slowed the decrease of global temperatures? Is there a “nuclear power to degrees saved” converter?
I can't say if this question is asked in good faith.
Pretty obviously it's better than what the other European countries have been doing.
someone could calculate the savings in CO2 emissions over all the power generated by nuclear energy each year in France, since the power stations were built, vs coal plants (which would have been the alternative at the time)
I get irrationally angry when a map is skewed in this way and there is no way to change it. The more you zoom in, the worse the distortion is made to be. Even zooming all the way out does not eliminate the angular distortion. This took actual effort on some programmer's part! Who ever thought that this is a good idea?!?
It's like those navigational mini maps (car or computer game) that won't keep north pointing up... only worse.
Also got annoyed by this, but worked out pretty quickly that if you hold down right click and drag then you can change the angle
You can also change the perspective by simultaneously holding the Ctrl key and moving the mouse.
Don't get angry so much over minor things, your older self will thank you. Somebody did something for free, gave it to you for free, and so they did not do a perfect job. There are worse things in life.
My visualisation of physical flow between countries or zones, you can see the net flow with arrow of relative size and colors :
https://energygraph.info/d/7dWs1mVVk/interconnect-physical-f...
Something I've wondered for a while: if the whole continent is on a synchronized grid, how can countries tell to or from whom they're exporting and importing electricity. I can see how they can measure their total imports or exports by comparing generation to consumption, but how do they figure out which neighbour they're getting electricity from / sending it to?
For completeness - that's just one grid included in this viz, for the map of the different european grids see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...
(Russia is another big chunk of Europe but not included in the above map, though I think it may be the same grid with the Baltics)
For the question, measuring the flow of electricity is just normal power engineering, your home electricity meter does it as well. It's not so much the countries doing it though.
The Baltics are disconnecting from the Soviet era BRELL grid with Russia and Belarus in two months [0].
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/baltic-countries-leave-...
February 8th, 2025. Power is currently not exchanged, only synchronization services. All of the hardware necessary on the Baltic side has been commissioned and is preparing to operate. Why synchronous condensers were selected versus battery storage (which can provide the same ancillary grid support services), I cannot say.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/baltic-power-grid
You can measure the flow of power by calculating the vector product of the current and voltage in the power line. EEVblog has a very good explanation video how this is done in an (analog) domestic watt-hour meter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_3DXcB9-xE
By measuring current flows across the wires.
There are five synchronous areas in Europe, the largest one being the synchronous grid of continental Europe [1].
Each national grids has interconnections with other grids and you can measure the flow of power through these interconnections to know who is sending electricity or getting electricity from neighbours.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...
Do you mean, for example, that the UK is importing energy from France, but where are they importing it from?
It's a fair question. Energy charts has both the physical flows and trading charts for Germany.
E.g. trading https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&...
Physical flows https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&...
And it's not the same, so sometimes there is just "transit", although transit here should I guess be understood very loosely. I also assume they just know who paid for what.
Edit: although upon re-reading I think you probably asked something else. Sorry in that case.
You don't. You guess based on generation, consumption and where the power lines are hooked up.
Absolutely false. Current flow is metered using current transformers.
full disclosure: I install high voltage switchgear for a living.
Seeing current flow through switches isn't the same as seeing specifically where your power is coming from.
Like, if power from several different sources flows into a single substation before it goes to your home, you know exactly which source created the electricity you're using?
And if I purchase power from a 100% renewable company, is it always only electricity from their generators, never ever mixed in with power from other grid sources during downtime?
No, it's just best estimates based on generation, consumption and flow.
That's like taking a bucket of water out of the ocean and saying you know where it came from. Sure, it might have come from the nearest estuary, but odds are it got mixed in with water that originated somewhere else.
Electricity transmission is a bit like water pressure and distribution. You're not going to get the same electrons (or water molecules) that you subscribed to from various producers in the distribution network put in, the flow causality and the physical embodiments of production are different though related things.
Kirchoff's laws applies though. It should be possible to calculate where the power in your outlet comes from for the power line operators.
A little faster and clearer one in my opinion: https://app.electricitymaps.com/
two different things; electricitymaps.com is a much more macro view, nice for looking at inter-country flows, whereas this one is great for looking at individual generation points and flows
Copper Sushi doesn't load for me, but I'm wondering how it is going to beat the awesome electricitymaps. They have all the data and quite a good viewer.
It shows a much finer grained representation of the whole transportation network. So you have much better idea of where is electricity produced and consumed within each country. When it comes to figuring out what the electricity mix is made of, electricitymaps is clearer.
Meta: for those unfamiliar, 1.21 GW is a reference to the 1985 movie Back to the Future. Clip of the scene in question:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDuZqYeNiOA
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future
If you haven't seen it, the entire trilogy is worth checking out: very fun and quite family friendly.
If you are a regular HN reader who is (or was until this post) unfamiliar with Back to the Future, I'd love to know three more random facts about your life. In my world view, you are part of a fascinatingly small group of people.
Part 3 came out in 1990. So, anyone born after (less than 34 years old) who didn't bother to go back and watch it, would be sufficient? I'm familiar with the series' existence, but had no idea what 1.21 reference was. AMA, hah.
Since the franchise hasn't been rebooted like so many others, it hasn't seem the $$$ marketing that would introduce it to new generations.
Like The Princess Bride or Labyrinth, BTTF currently remains a phenomenom of the 80's and 90's -- familiar to most from that time and deeply treasured by some, but not refreshed and sustained the way the Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel/DC, etc brands have been.
I’ve been on the BTTF ride at… wherever in Florida it is, and I loved that as a teenager. The films just never really appealed though for some reason. I guess one related fact would be I have a lot of gaps like that in the movies I have seen. For instance, people are often shocked that I’ve never see any of the Indiana Jones movies (also loved the rides!); but Star Wars I could probably recite the scripts of.
I don’t think I have any other facts that are very interesting, but then again I didn’t think not having seen BTTF was all that interesting either. For the record I was familiar with 1.21GW and what it related to… I don’t live under a rock!
I have kids that are in their late 20s. They never watch older movies unless someone forces them to. There is so much new media coming out that they don’t feel the need to watch older movies, even if everyone is telling them it is very good.
+2
I’d love to normalise pronouncing gigabyte as jigabyte
I thought they mean "jiggawatts" in the movie, i.e. more than bazzillion watts. Where do people pronounce gigawatts like that?
On movie sets back when no one used "giga-" in daily conversation.
The French dub is famous (in France of course) for saying gigowatts.
Giga just wasn't as commonly used an SI prefix as it is now I guess.
Someone also set up a bunch of Graphana dashboards with European electricity data at https://energygraph.info/
Take it down before the Russians see it.
One observation I could make from the visualization is that major cities have very big power generation centers, despite that they seem to be drawing power from surrounding areas. It is very apparent near London. I guess it is obvious that bigger cities have more demand from both industrial and residential consumption.
From the bottom of the page:
> TL;DR: we can delete most of the emissions of the developed world today by switching heating & car and truck transport to electrical - if we make sure we generate all electricity with near-zero emissions. Just building more renewable generation won't solve it though, as you still need to make sure it covers all consumption everywhere. This map intends to show why that's a complicated problem, and why we should also be smart about where we build renewable generation so that most of the generated energy can also be used and not thrown away because the grid can't handle it.
This is what I wonder about when I drive through West Texas and see massive wind farms in the middle of nowhere.
Hugged to death? Map is not loading.
Edit: Loaded after a few refreshes. Slowness relates to loading static assets from coppersushi.herokuapp.com
Rendering could be more performant, but pretty graphs!
Was this made with a visualization library? Or is this custom code on top of Mapbox?
> we can delete most of the emissions of the developed world today by switching heating & car and truck transport to electrical
Don't forget the fact that we need batteries to store the power, which is a much more annoying problem.
Heating and transport are the easiest in that regard. Most trucks drive during the day have the driver resting during the night. At night there's little demand, but wind and nuclear continue generating, so from a grid standpoint that's the perfect time to charge all the trucks. Cars can similarly be mostly charged during the night, as that's when they are at home. Heat demand is more variable, but heat is much easier to store than electricity itself. Everyone with a boiler already has a heat store at home. If you make the boiler a bit larger you can configure it to only heat when there's excess electricity (typically the night or at peak solar power around noon). And that's before you start with more efficient heat storage devices, like heating sand instead of water.
All of those solutions require infrastructure investments and smarter grids (likely with real-time pricing to incentivize consumers to use power when there's an excess, and an API so devices like chargers and boilers can act on this information without user input). But they don't require power storage at the grid level.
(German) offshore seems to be missing
The highlighted saturated links are a nice touch.
Don't share this map of the power grid, or the terrorists will use it to end us all.
A map is not a territory.
pretty cool graphs
Impressive - Norway and Sweden are exporting ~6GW right now with Finland throwing in for another GW.
Probably contributing to the high percentage of EV sales. In Finland 90% of new vehicle sales are EVs. Sweden and Norway are at ~%60, and have a greater share of PHEVs.
"EVs, they're gonna be a bloodbath" and "they don't work in the cold", indeed /s
Never seems to occur to people that "I don't ever have to stand outside in the cold pumping gas into my car" and "I can have my car warmed up by the time I get in to go somewhere" are really popular features.
Also, they didn't build out their EV charging infrastructure via legal settlement, leading to having chargers owned and operated by a company ambivalent about maintenance and repair.
Europe as a whole is 24%, rising at a good clip. Also surprising is Romania - ahead of everyone except the Scandinavian countries and way, way ahead of all the former soviet states.
Russians taking notes.
Thats why the more decentralized the more resilient. No single point of failure, redundancy in routing. Ahh, yes. just like the internet used to be :-)
If the Russians don't already have agents in most major power companies their intelligence service is slacking