PowerLight
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:
- https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/dutch-electrical-power-figures-2/ (text)
- https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&c=NL note how the solar part is tiny
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
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/now
Returns a JSON-structure like:
{
"energymix": [
{ "id": "solar", "name": "Solar power", "percentage": 40, "color": "#FFFF00"},
{ "id": "wind", "name": "Wind power", "percentage": 25, "color": "#0000FF"},
{ "id": "fossil", "name": "Fossil (gas+coal)", "percentage": 25, "color": "#FF0000"},
{ "id": "biomass", "name": "Biomass", "percentage": 5, "color": "#00FF00"},
{ "id": "nuclear", "name": "Nuclear power", "percentage": 5, "color": "#FF00FF"}
]
}
The power light can just display the fractions with the corresponding colors as specified in the JSON, in the order they are mentioned in the JSON.