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Robin Hawkes ⚡️

robhawkes@fosstodon.org

<p>🐙 Visualisation at Octopus Energy<br />⚡️ Obsessed with maps and energy<br />📸 Photo-taker of Welsh mountains</p><p>✨ Creator of ViziCities<br />👨‍💻 Previously Wood Mackenzie &amp; devrel at Mozilla</p><p><a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/Energy" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Energy</span></a> <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/RenewableEnergy" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>RenewableEnergy</span></a> <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/DataViz" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>DataViz</span></a> <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/Maps" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Maps</span></a> <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/GIS" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>GIS</span></a> <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/Photography" class="mention hasht

Posts

  • Post #4501904

    Europe&#39;s electricity network as seen from space* *Sort of… The ISS edition of my experiments visualising energy data using Blender. It shows most major high-voltage transmission lines, inter-connectors, power stations, wind farms, solar farms and more. Colours show line voltage if available, and only power lines above 132 kV are visible unless they are offshore. Data from OpenStreetMap and Mapterhorn. What other countries would you like to see?

  • Post #4487706

    Northwest Europe&#39;s electricity network* visualised in Blender *mostly… It shows all the major high-voltage transmission lines, inter-connectors, power stations, wind farms, solar farms and more. Colours show line voltage if available, and only power lines above 132 kV are visible unless they are offshore. What other countries would you like to see?

  • Post #4427158

    Britain&#39;s electricity network* *now in high-res with floofy clouds More experiments visualising energy data using Blender and Geometry Nodes

  • Post #4035226

    Twice the output for nearly half the number of wind turbines… This is exactly why re-powering is such an important tool for levelling-up the renewable assets we already have. I&#39;m very curious to dig into the plans once they are published later in the week. https://www.scottishpower.com/w/plans-to-repower-iconic-whitelee-the-uk-s-largest-onshore-windfarm

  • Post #2546545

    I made an interactive map showing the realtime location of fully-electric buses in London as well showing the routes with at least 1 electric bus on them. 🚌 https://tfl-bods-map.vercel.app Electric buses are worked out by comparing vehicle ID with the TfL fleet audit. Gaps are filled in by querying vehicle fuel-type from the DVLA API. Data: Bus Open Data Service (BODS) &amp;amp; DVLA #DataViz #Maps #GIS #London

  • Post #1957054

    This is my grandad, he built the original R2-D2 for the first Star Wars film… Jack was a master sheet metal worker, and was roped into using his skills on an obscure project to turn the sketches for the droid into something that could be constructed out of aluminium sheets. I always knew he&#39;d helped make part of R2-D2. However… #MayThe4th #MayTheFouthBeWithYou #StarWars

  • Post #1337511

    First power at Sofia wind farm! That&amp;#39;s now three of the four massive offshore wind farms at Dogger Bank generating electricity. At around 7:30am yesterday morning the first of the Siemens Gamesa 14MW wind turbines at Sofia exported electricity to the grid. It continued exporting throughout the day before being disconnected overnight and then reconnected again around 7:00am today. No doubt more turbines will come online in the coming days and weeks.

  • Post #1073476

    Great Britain threw away 5GW of available wind power during Storm Dave and replaced it using gas 🔥 That&amp;#39;s one and a half Sizewell C-sized nuclear power stations, or four Dogger Bank A-sized wind farms. Or to put it another way, it&amp;#39;s a shit load of power. Why throw it away? Because our straw isn&amp;#39;t big enough…

  • Post #788487

    Internet person: &amp;quot;But this unsubstantiated datapoint about a heat pump that &amp;#39;someone I know&amp;#39; / my plumber mate / [insert random third-party] says they&amp;#39;re shit&amp;quot; How about near-realtime data from every single of the real Cosy heat pumps installed by Octopus Energy? That&amp;#39;s what we&amp;#39;ve done with the Cosy Heat Pump Fleet Performance Dashboard. https://octopus.energy/cosy-heat-pump-performance/

  • Post #760406

    Genuinely excited about the plug-in solar news in the UK, I&amp;#39;ll absolutely be doing this! I&amp;#39;ve wanted solar for ages but I have a weird roof so the idea of experimenting with something simple in the garden or on the garage is very appealing. Patiently awaiting more on exactly how this is going to work and when we&amp;#39;ll be able to buy and plug these devices in 👀

  • Post #697921

    What does it look like to build one of the world&amp;#39;s largest offshore wind farms, one month at a time? Each cell in the grid shows a full month of construction, using AIS data from Kpler to follow every single vessel as they go about the installation and commissioning of the giant 1.2GW wind farm. Every time I play this I notice something new, like the methodical survey pattern on the right of the wind farm in April. Or the impact of bad weather causing the vessels to occasionally halt w...

  • Post #697920

    Uncovering the hidden patterns during the construction of Dogger Bank A, one of the world&amp;#39;s largest offshore wind farms… Like yesterday&amp;#39;s animation, each cell in the grid shows a full month of construction, using AIS data from Kpler to follow every single vessel as they go about the installation and commissioning of the giant 1.2GW wind farm. This time all vessel movement can be seen at once for each month, which suddenly shows all the hidden patterns and careful choreography.

  • Post #697919

    Do we have first power at Dogger Bank B? According to the balancing data we have 26MW of output today at Dogger Bank B, which will eventually have an installed capacity of 1.2GW. This also implies two (out of 95) of the 13 MW Haliade-X wind turbines have been installed in recent weeks. The data first appears on the morning of March 11th with 13MW of reported output, which also aligns with a single turbine being installed at the time.

  • Post #697918

    Animating Storm Amy in 1km resolution The first named storm of the 2025/26 season, Storm Amy broke the UK&amp;#39;s October low-pressure record. The highest recorded gust was 96mph, though it&amp;#39;s possible there were even higher gusts as a power outage knocked out the recording station. This visualisation shows the wind speeds as the storm passes over the country, alongside the output from wind and gas power plants.

  • Post #697917

    &amp;quot;Grok is this true?&amp;quot; It&amp;#39;s terrifying how normal this has become.

  • Post #697916

    Do I need a reason to add a retro halftone print effect for Turbine Tycoon? I&amp;#39;ve always loved the warm analogue style of mid-century printed media, particularly the retro-futuristic illustrations seen in Eagle magazine. It&amp;#39;s an effect I&amp;#39;ve wanted to explore and apply to my work for a long time.

  • Post #697915

    Living near the sea has its perks

  • Post #697914

    The beautiful data views in SimCity (2013) directly inspired my early data visualisation work and are partly responsible for me picking it up as a career. It&amp;#39;s now 13 years since that game was released. Back in the year 2000, a 13-year-old me would have had to wait another 13 years to play it. That&amp;#39;s a lot of thirteens… It wasn&amp;#39;t my favourite in the series — the online-only launch was a shambles — but it was arguably the most influential of the SimCity games for me pe...

  • Post #310754

    Here&amp;#39;s a close up view of the uncrewed XOCEAN vessels performing robotic surveys across the Dogger Bank wind farms. I&amp;#39;ve spent far too much time this weekend adding new features to my wind farm construction animations, you can see a couple of them here. I love that you can clearly see the remote-controlled vessel performing a detailed survey grid around one of the wind turbines. Perhaps checking that everything has been installed correctly?

  • Post #297611

    Here&amp;#39;s a sneaky peak the next release of the GB Renewables Map, or should I say the GB Not Just a Renewables Map… That&amp;#39;s right, all types of power assets are coming to the map! Plus a whole bunch of other improvements. It&amp;#39;s been an absolutely massive piece of work that&amp;#39;s sucked up most of my evenings and free time, but I&amp;#39;m very nearly there now. And if you didn&amp;#39;t already know, yup, this a hobby project I do for fun outside of my day job… becaus...

  • Post #270420

    It&amp;#39;s here! All power assets are now live on my GB Renewables Map ⚡ That&amp;#39;s right, it&amp;#39;s not just wind farms any more. Now you can see live and historic data for gas power plants, nuclear, grid batteries, biomass, pumped hydro and even a bit of solar. Wind farms are still the default for now, though you can enable as many or as few of the other fuel types and your selection will be remembered when you come back to the website. It&amp;#39;s already live so go play for your...

  • Post #256941

    What if you could see live gas turn-up in England at the same time as wind, gas and battery curtailment in Scotland? That&amp;#39;d be kinda interesting right? I suppose it&amp;#39;s a good job it&amp;#39;s coming to my map, and soon… Here&amp;#39;s a taste of what to look forward to: 🔥 Live data on all power assets, not just wind farms 🔋 And yes, that includes batteries and other storage ⬆️ View turn-up actions, not just curtailment And there&amp;#39;s plenty more on top of that…

  • Post #166611

    What if you could visualise how electricity flows from a wind farm in Scotland to your home in London? Ok it&#39;s not quite that simple, but it got me thinking that there must be a way of visualising the complexity of the electricity transmission grid in Great Britain. This is my first attempt…