Wind output and curtailment in Scotland during Storm Floris

Experimenting with the styling of the wind particles as well as the colour ramp for the wind speed layer. Kinda loving how much detail you can see now from the Meteomatics EURO1k weather model

A zoomed in view of wind farm curtailment in Scotland during Storm Floris… The yellow rings are showing the curtailed volume at each wind farm as a proportion of their installed capacity.

Are the @neso-energy.bsky.social Operational Forums recorded anywhere? I'm unable to take part live and so keep missing out of them 😢 Some recordings are on the website but not all of them. For example, July 16th has slides but is missing a recording… www.neso.energy/what-we-do/s...

I've never read as many books in a single year and I don't plan on stopping… I also don't plan on stopping keeping track and making pointless data visualisations from my reading data 🤓

Experimenting with adding gas power plants on the map so you can see turn-up in the south in response to wind curtailment in the north. The red rings show gas turn-up scaled to the capacity of each power plant. I'm currently showing all gas offers so it still needs work.

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Switching off wind farms on July 4th lost 113,831MWh of clean energy, only to replace it with gas. The map shows how much wind farms were curtailed that day alongside boundary capacity: 🟢 Spare cap. at boundary 🟠 Close to limit (poss. constrained) 🔴 At limit (constrained)

Experimenting with showing transmission boundaries on my renewables map, colour-coded based on forecast flow limits (red = boundary at limit) This is critical context for understanding the reason why wind farms are often switched off in Scotland, even when it's windy

Curious to see if people are as furiously against the funding of new nuclear generation via consumer bills as they are against the funding of new renewables via consumer bills…

"The financial framework designed to support the project […] will grant EDF support via energy bills from the start of its construction." www.theguardian.com/business/202...

I'm trying to get my head around the frankly insane curtailment volumes predicted in the latest @neso-energy.bsky.social Future Energy Scenarios data Am I right in saying that these curtailment volumes don't even include curtailment due to grid constraints? 🤯 www.neso.energy/publications...

Generation and curtailment at British wind farms during Storm Éowyn earlier this year 🌬️⚡ Notice the wind farms in Scotland turning off as the storm passes due to very high wind speeds and transmission constraints You can see live and historic generation on the map: renewables-map.robinhawkes.com

The new wind farms doing their thing… Well, aside from Moray West which was 100% curtailed at the time I recorded the animation 🫠

Three of the newest wind farms are now available on my live renewables map: ✅ Dogger Bank A ✅ Moray West ✅ Neart na Gaoithe All three include live output, curtailment as well as historic data renewables-map.robinhawkes.com

I still can't get over the resolution of the @meteomatics.com wind data, I swear you can see the wake effects from Gwynt-y-Mor in this example 🤯 Their EURO1k model supports wake effects, so it's definitely possible…

I'm experimenting with @meteomatics.com high-res weather data on my live renewables map to replace the low-res GFS data that I've used up to now. The difference is incredible… 🤯

Holy shit, this is starting to get interesting… You can literally see the wind snaking its way through the various valleys 🤯 I'm experimenting with @meteomatics.com high-res wind data vs. the existing low-res GFS data (second image)

I went paddle-boarding this weekend for the first time and loved it so much I know I'll be getting my own board and gear. So… any recommendations, brands, etc? 🙏 I can also recommend Niwbwrch pictured (old photo of mine), great views of the mountains as you paddle.

Oh, what's this… 👀

I'll tell you what, if recent energy events have done anything it's to reignite the fire within me and remind me why I do what I do and work where I work. It's never been more important to communicate and educate, especially with such complex topics.

Are there any public datasets that I could use to make an educated guess on the £/MWh for wind farm PPAs?

On the plus side we now get to see all these serious alternatives to zonal pricing that have been promised to fix everything… www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Wind curtailment and gas turn-up costs in 2025 are up ~50% compared to this time last year

Britain pays wind farms to turn off when it’s windy and overpays gas plants to switch on instead. It'll cost bill payers up to £8b/yr by 2030. Zonal energy pricing would slash this. We’ve started tracking this (avoidable) waste live on our site: octopus.energy

Proud friend moment 😊 It's their first time taking advantage of the @octopus.energy Free Electricity sessions, the next one is this afternoon. octopus.energy/free-electri...

Gwynt y Mor off the North Wales coast is fully curtailed at the moment, you don't see that every day! It's being paid £179.95/MWh to turn off, though part of that will be covering the lost RO subsidy.

Slightly depressing that the day we released this has been one of the worst of the year so far for curtailment costs. And the day isn't over yet…🫠

👀 www.rechargenews.com/markets-and-...

It's been 3 & 1/2 years since I joined @octopus.energy and I've never been more certain that I'm where I need to be. Never-ending opportunity for genuine impact and positive change! 🐙⚡❤️

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 OFW: Mona 1.5GW ✅ ; Morgan, a sister project sharing development, also of 1.5GW decision expected later this year. Combined ⚡ 3.4M🏘️ Timeline afaics c'29

Seemingly every commentary on recent events in energy

Cwm Idwal 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Plenty of wind today, so why have some of the largest wind farms been switched off for hours? 🤔 Combined it's over 5.2 gigawatts missing from the grid ❌ Hornsea 1 & 2 ❌ Moray East ❌ Seagreen ❌ Triton Knoll ❌ Viking

This'll be an expensive hobby… But worth it.

I've been getting back into reading this year, which of course means tracking the data and visualising it 🤓 I fell in love with the Murderbot books (so good), which happens to have a brand new series on Apple TV out today 🤖

Bills in the South won’t go up with zonal electricity pricing - the govt has committed to that. Here’s why: youtu.be/nKJLVaJa9Ko

We know only a little about why Spain and Portugal's blackout occurred on Monday, but enough to what went wrong and what should have happened but didn't. Javier Blas's conference call with REE gives us the clues 1/

A lot of mention about “breaking the link” with gas as an alternative to zonal, though little detail on what that actually means or how it would work. ps. Zonal also breaks the link…

An update from me - there's an addition to the family arriving earlier than planned so this is about as polished as it'll get for now: Beta for Version 2 of TerraVolt. It has quirks & faults but it is about usable & less heavy going on devices: app.terravolt.co.uk (1/3) #energy #ukgrid #power

Moray East wind farm is being investigated for excessive curtailment profits, I guess I can tick that off my 2025 bingo card… www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications...

It's about time I wrote this series of blog posts… Anything in particular you'd like me to cover?

It's about time I wrote this series of blog posts… Anything in particular you'd like me to cover?

It's lovely and windy today, which means lots of clean green electricity. Or does it? See all those purple dots in Scotland? Those are wind farms that we're turning off as of 8am… 🤔

I'm not sure Viking being switched off over 56% of the time that it could have been generating counts as being the "most productive"… Sure this is due to grid constraints that will be resolved, though it's not helping the argument for renewables when the data says the opposite.

An unusual period of transmission-related curtailment for Hornsea 2 wind farm recently. It's not often you'll see this much grid-related curtailment this far south of Scotland.

Lots of recent discussion within the energy industry that continues to validate the need for transparent analysis (& public availability) of data. I've lost count the times real data has challenged my assumptions. It's why I continue to build public tools to explore the data.

This stacked wind turbine concept has strong Your World Tomorrow vibes from the 70s www.windcatching.com

There was roughly similar curtailed wind energy in both January 2024 and 2025… And yet the cost for January 2024 was multiple times that of 2025 – £31m vs. £10m! Why? A mix of different wind farms turning down and the cost of electricity changing over time.

Sometimes I just like looking at the pretty wind patterns Explore my live renewables map for yourself here: renewables-map.robinhawkes.com