PowerLight

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Project PowerLight
PowerLight.jpg
Show energy mix of dutch power generation as a pie chart on a LED ring
Status In progress
Contact bertrik
Last Update 2022-06-30

The concept

Draw the current power generation-mix as a kind of pie chart on a LED ring light, with colors representing a fraction of a specific power generation source.

For example:

  • blue: wind power
  • yellow: solar power
  • green: power from biomass
  • purple: power from nuclear
  • red: fossil + other

Power generation data

This is a bit of a problem. There is no open data available with reasonably complete power generation fractions!

The solar power problem

In particular the solar power fraction is incomplete, see also:

There is a model to estimate this fraction at https://api.netanders.io/, however you cannot use this API without a key (and you can't just get a key).

Hardware

Parts:

Software

The software consists of two parts:

  • backend part that collects the power generation data
  • light part that visualizes the power generation as fractions on a LED ring

Backend

To be implemented, this will probably run on my web page stofradar.nl. Some REST-like resource like http://stofradar.nl:9001/power/latest

Returns a JSON-structure like:

{
  "time": 1656490664,
  "total": 1600,
  "energymix": [
    { "id": "solar", "name": "Solar power", "percent": 40, "color": "#FFFF00"},
    { "id": "wind", "name": "Wind power", "percent": 25, "color": "#0000FF"},
    { "id": "fossil", "name": "Fossil (gas+coal)", "percent": 25, "color": "#FF0000"},
    { "id": "biomass", "name": "Biomass", "percent": 5, "color": "#00FF00"},
    { "id": "nuclear", "name": "Nuclear power", "percent": 5, "color": "#FF00FF"}
  ]
}
  • time is a unix time stamp in seconds, representing the end of the period that the power figures refer to
  • total is the total current electrical power usage, suitable for display (inside the ring for example), unit yet to be determined
  • energymix is an array of percentages along with their colors, to be displayed clockwise on the led ring, mandatory fields
    • percent
    • color

Light

Sources: https://github.com/bertrik/PowerLight