Gridwatch: What Just Happened Five Minutes Ago?

We require energy to sustain life, of which, we have devised numerous kinds: wind, solar, oil, natural gas, nuclear, hydrothermal, biomass, just to name a few. But these sources of energy all have been under inspection. Which ones offend with CO2 emissions more than others?

So, statistics were drawn, graphs were made, and the information regarding carbon emissions from each source was made public. This kind of information unintentionally, and rather inherently, leaves out crucial contributing and hidden factors. In other words, sometimes a result isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Daily, hourly, even momentary fluctuations in energy output and carbon emissions can lead to trends and patterns that could potentially lead to a bigger problem that a simple yearly, or even monthly graph, cannot predict. For example, we all know that wind power is intermittent, but how intermittent is it? Does it always exceed the minimum output limit in its intermittency, or does it often fail to do so?

Imagine a scenario where you could run an app on your phone that could give you real-time data on how much energy a specific source was producing in your city or country or locality. It can tell you how much carbon it was emitting, and then produce a graph that could not only provide a final value of production and emission, but also trends that depend on various parameters like weather, seasons, population, and geographical location? Take the stage, Gridwatch.

While it was reported that wind energy contributed to about six percent of the total energy generation in April 2015, it was Gridwatch that revealed a much grimmer backstory. Hourly variations from wind were huge, ranging between 0.2 percent to 21 percent production. Unfortunately, 34 percent of the time wind failed to exceed even three percent contribution mark to the grid. This means the six percent total contribution previously reported to the public is misleading and the actual figure is far less.

So what exactly is Gridwatch? It is an application that reports in five minute intervals the energy production, carbon-emission and power-outage stats for electricity in countries like the U.K., France, Australia, and Ontario, Canada (but not the rest of Canada). It gives useful data about intermittency, and can predict unidentified patterns. The application uses delightful visuals like dials and graphs, alongside raw data, updating every five minutes, to present the viewer with a multitude of comparable data. One single page presents the aforementioned data from all available energy sources for an easy comparison.

Let's look at the carbon emissions at a quick glance using the Gridwatch for the U.K. at the moment of writing this article, 1/3/2017 at 19:10:00 GMT. Gridwatch reveals that oil, gas, and biomass emit the most carbon, while nuclear, wind, and hydrothermal are the least of the offenders. Another set of data, taken 11/16/2016 at 7:30:00 GMT, shows coal and oil emitting less carbon than the former data, while nuclear and wind the least. Considering the intermittent nature of wind and the geographic limitations of hydrothermal, and of course with nuclear having the maximum energy output, nuclear can be concluded the winner of low-emissions.

Ever since I learned of the Gridwatch, it's become a perpetual tab on my internet browser. Personally, if I don't feel like trusting a source, or want to verify it, or if I am merely looking for direct data, I will visit the website and simply refresh the data every five minutes. For me, drawing up data is oddly very satisfying, if not encouraging. It is interesting to find information on how, in the course of a day, energy production and carbon emission can vary. Now, I do not live in any of the countries that support Gridwatch, but I do understand the benefits and the studies to which it leads, that of cleaner energy production. I hope that this app will become a frequent tab on yours, too. May this be a prosperous new year for clean energy!

Priyarshini Ghosh is a nuclear engineering graduate at Kansas State University, chasing after fast neutrons in her lab. She is an aspiring writer and an advocate for nuclear as a clean, safe and cheap source of energy. She loves to talk about nuclear power @priyoghoshX on Twitter. She has a background in chemical engineering that guides her with the intricacies of designing detectors.