PowerLight

Project PowerLight
Show energy mix of dutch power generation as a pie chart on a LED ring
Status	In progress
Contact	bertrik
Last Update	2022-06-27

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

Parts:

• LED ring light https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005003798658173.html
• Wemos D1 mini with an ESP8266

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.

Light

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