 And as always, there's a link to a Q&A pad on the events page. DC prefers Python to PHP, studies IT and has an interest in open data in the energy sector. And under Plant Watch DE, he started a project where he links the list of power stations by the official authorities with the data from the EU emissions register. And hello from me too. This is going to be about Plant Watch, which is where the interpreters would probably prefer power plant. I'm going to talk about how it started. And I started in November 2017. At this time, there was no Climate Protection Act. There was no phasing out of coal. There was no judgment on government protection from the German Constitutional Court. And there was no pandemic either. But I cared about the issue anyway, so I thought I'll take an Excel sheet that the German Infrastructure Authority is publishing online. And I'll work on that. This is the... These are the signs. So we have the CO2 emissions. We have the efficiency values. We have production. And the plants are colored according to the fuels that they use. And to come to look on one of these, clicking on one of these leads you to the details on that particular power station and including emission data. And if you then go to the actual load on these power plants, you get that for the individual power station, a power plant as well. And the amount of the terabyte, a terawatt hour is produced. If you click on individual items such as this one called BNA 1401B, you have data on the individual power plant where it is located and so on. No problems. For some power plants, you find the year 1970 as the year when it started. For some of these power plants, Google Maps will show you maps that are not correct. Not at the very correct location. And I am also affected by the current Django security hole, which is why the site is offline at the moment. I am not processing any personal data. I regenerate the data as soon as a new plant is published to the site. It's not offline, but I'll patch it as soon as possible. So what is the competition as it were? We have the energy charts operated by Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. That's operated by Bruno Borger, who's quite active on Twitter as well. And they have diverse diagrams on power generation. Then there is the electricity map, which is current power production, including CO2 emissions. And there is SMART, a chart by the Federal Grid Agency. We have the energy charts here, annual power production or electricity production grouped by power plants and into these current blocks. And the full capacity or the full load that is on the individual blocks of the power plants. Here you've got maps of Europe from electricity map, CO2 emissions. You can see that countries such as the UK and Spain that do not solely use nuclear power already have lower CO2 emissions than Germany does, and power generated by the Federal Grid Agency. So if you're more interested in the issue, here are these other sources for other interesting data back to Plantwatch. So I have three main sources for the data. I have the plant list by the Federal Grid Agency, the list of power plant blocks. One plant can have more than one block. We have seen that already. And this is updated about twice per year. Then you have the PRTR, the Pollutant Release and Transfer Register. That doesn't just have emission data of all the power plants, but any kind of plant that has a duty and obligation to report and that emits CO2 and this is published once per year. And these then are the data of the year before the year before. So in 2022 data from 2020 should be available and we'll come to that later on. And then we have the energy market data. Again, the Federal Grid Agency publishes this quite short term. And let's look at the way these data are structured. The power plant list has a good structure. There's an identifier for each plant or block. And it's quite easy to work with that data. The Pollutant Register publishes data as SQ Lite databases. And that's a bit better. And the SMART data, well, that has a slightly difficult format, which we will see. So three data sources and I have to then work on mapping these entities with each other. Plant blocks, for example. As far as the plant register is concerned, that is quite possible. Every block has an ID, BA and a number. And I map that to the ID of the PRTR data. That's the one-to-one mapping. It is a bit of an arduous work, but it's possible. If you look at the SMART data, so that's CSV, OK. You could, of course, open that in a spreadsheet, giving you nice columns. But there is one file here called Power Plant. And the blocks in practice are somehow included in these columns. But the generation DE column is relevant here. That could have been better structured to make it machine readable. And therefore it is rather complex to map or have this JSON dictionary, which I use to link the names from the files to the ID numbers that I had before. But it is still doable. There is a bit more effort, though. Right. This is a screenshot of this website from the Federal Grid Agency. They published these data. And as you can see, the reporting years from 2007 to 2019 have been available since mid-December last year. So that is actually quite late. So the 2019 data should have been available in February 2021, which wasn't the case. I asked by Fragtenstaat the Freedom of Information website on the 1st of December, and in mid-December it was published. And I also received an answer through the Freedom of Information website saying that it was published. Is that all good then? Well, I asked about the 2020 data at the same time, in February that is, of 2022, and there wasn't a response for a long time. Shortly after my query there was an informal email saying that there were IT problems. So the data was not forthcoming, it said. And in April I asked again and I then received a formal response saying that data isn't there and that is very regrettable because these are environment data and the EU actually prescribes that these data should be published 13 months after they are generated. That would be February, but there is no data. Why is that? I'm not going to blame the Federal Environment Protection Agency, this agency, but we have federalism. It's a matter for the individuals, federal states in Germany. So the local authorities have to register this data, collect this data. I have a list of the status that I copied from the data. So we have local authorities that report to the federal state authorities, which then reports to the Environment Protection Agency, which in turn reports to the EU and to the public. And this tool was offline from the beginning of this year to the 1st of April. And here there's a new schedule, the deadlines that the operators and the various authorities should keep to. That wasn't the case this and last year. Now, back to this offline phenomenon. The thing is, as we've seen, the deadline for publication has passed. Reporting was supposed to have happened by early April. The end of April, but since it was offline until the 1st of April, well, things haven't been updated, but at least there is a notice on that. The state of Brandenburg has said publicly that they are extending their deadline to the end of May, and the tool is working now. Okay. So this is Brandenburg and North Rhine Westphalia state of things. Brandenburg is slightly advanced, but Bavaria has no information at all. They are saying something on the website about the reporting year 2021. We will supply forms for registering and submitting the data. So they are switching to paper. Paper, it's not very easy to understand. So back to the power plant data. Plantwatch.de, how does a coal power plant work? Coal is being ground, grinded, then burnt, and water is turning to steam, which drives a turbine, and through the rotational energy, a generator then generates electricity, which is then fed into the grid. And we can now first look at these power plants in more detail. Let's start with the largest fails, and we'll start with the power plant in Neurat. They have this 1970 bug, so they didn't start operating in 1970, and several blocks here exist. Most of these were constructed from 1972 to 1976. Two new blocks online on the grids have been since 2012, and that sadly was an accident, a severe accident, when a scaffolding collapsed, and there were fatalities and injuries. Two people died. That was in 2017 during construction. Investigation was then later stopped. And there was simply miscalculation in the capacity of the scaffolding, the load capacity, and the operator was able to say, well, they didn't know any better, and it was technical failure of the parts that were used. That's what this was judged to be. So we have another plant by the Nord-Sverian operator RWE. This is an old plant that went onto the grid in 1963, was then renovated, and in 2008, from 2008, two new blocks were supposed to be built. And, well, what could possibly happen when RWE built a power plant? We can see the result here. Google Maps very nicely showing that one of the cooling towers has steam coming from it, the other does not. So what happened? Well, only one of the blocks ever went into operation. The other was damaged as it was put into operation. Acid was emitted. And this is something that is used in power plants, but it flowed somewhere where it shouldn't have got to. That is parts of the turbine. It was damaged and it was a complete write-off. So when I started plant watch, this was actually a specific kind of entry as a reserve or something. The power plant should have been taken off the grid because of current laws on power being grandfathered out. But it didn't happen. So how do your grandfather out different types of coal? Thus, the government decides on a date where the coal power plant must get off the grid. But that's different for the coal that is mostly produced in Germany. Which is hard coal or black coal. They get certain reparations to compensate for the lowering of energy output. And no sign of waste failure or the operator without an offer. And this is one of the plants that shouldn't produce power anymore. But it was decided that the power plant was essential to the system. And this is why it's not taking off the grid. And the operator, Ambrian, well rebuilt the power plant and switched it from switch to a different operating process. So if another power plant were to fail, this system would make it so that the consequences on the network aren't too bad. Yeah, now let's get on to another power plant. So it was planned in 2004 and in 2005 the mayor from the Conservative Party, CDU, decided to build two instead of one blocks and also to have a district heating incorporated. They started building it in 2007 and it was in operation from 2012. And there were problems with the T24 steel that was used and also the welding was controversial. Because the water in the power plant is under a lot of pressure. There was some delays and in 2015 the power plant was finally on grid. So in 2017 the European Court decided that the authorization for the power plant was faulty and the continuous cooling was banned. Because as you see the power plant is next to a river and of course it would make sense for the operator to just take water from the river to cool the plant and then pump the water back into the river. But well, that is not very good for the river and the fishes and this is why it was banned and why it was prohibited and now they have to use a cooling tower which adds a lot of cost and brings down the power plant's efficiency. The original plan was to district heating for the whole city of Hamburg from this power plant but the authorization was also very hard here and the plants were dropped in the end. And this is a very new power plant compared to our days in Germany. Now let's get to the most controversial power plant in Germany. Some people say it's a new block in terms of authorization but I can more or less decide which blocks I map onto which power plant. This power plant in 4 was built between 1964 and 1969. So you see power plants aren't built or made for 10 years of service but for a very long period of service. In 2009 the highest administrative court in North Rhine with failure in Münster decided that the development plan was not good and the construction was halted and three old blocks were also put out of operation in 2014 and decommissioned in 2014. And the administrative court said that it wasn't possible to just stop the decommissioning. So this was continued and at the moment the power plant has to run for two more years with a special permission as it was always used for German railway. In 2012 the permission was lifted by the administrative court. This is the last step before a power plant is put into operation where you check the emission values and check whether you can continue running it. There was special permission put out and in 2017 a new emission permission was applied for and in 2020 it was approved and in 2021 it turned out that the decision by the city of Essen was not valid because they would have had to explore more possible areas and as such the development plan was deemed invalid. Still the power plant has permission to operate but it's still planned to take it off the grid in the end. Now let's look at another German power plant tragedy the Ersching power plant was built in 1969 as an oil power plant and it was extended in 1974 by a third block and in 2006 they started building a block 4 which took even longer than block 5 and in since 2013 this plant has been under threat of discontinuation but in the wake of the Ukraine crisis this power plant was deemed relevant to the system essential and the discontinuation since 2020 this plant was running regularly since 2020 because coal prices went up and you can see that when you look at how high the load is on the single power plants now the future of these plants is uncertain because of the war which brought Russia and the Federal Grid Agency deemed the power plant a special network operation device and basically power consumers are paying for all of this now let's get to more positive power plant developments when we look at the emission values of this power plant they're rather low it's much better than coal plants so this would have been a good intermediary solution this power plant went into operation in 1957 and it was later extended by two coal blocks that are no longer in operation and in 2013 a new block was built and it was put into operation in 2016 and it also provides district heating for the city and this is what it looks like well and are there specialties here? this power plant was started in 2019 it doesn't have that much power but as a special feature it has 20 gas motors instead of a gas turbine and they managed to get from 0 to 100% performance in five minutes which is amazing because those old black coal power plants when you take them off the grid it takes a lot of time for them to even start up again so it's hardly ever worth it now we see that there's been a lot of very unfortunate stories we have a situation where brand new power plants are being stopped and put out of operation and also you see that the phase out of coal since the Ukraine crisis coal has been kind of accepted as an intermediary solution but our shift towards renewable energies is being hindered by the fact that we're still that dependent on coal England for example or the UK has managed to completely become independent of their coal plants and even Spain has managed to do that and we still haven't I'm not a friend of nuclear power and I think that the French power plant you've seen that the plant has cracks in the primary circle it's still being kept running because France has a lack of power plants and that's really bad now would it be possible to use nuclear energy responsibly and effectively and maybe that might have been better than using coal and gas as we did in Germany because we even built new power plants in order to stop nuclear energy and this might have been a mistake it might have also been a mistake that we didn't invest more in renewable energies and many plants in that direction were scrapped were between 3 and 7 kilowatt hours where it should be 19 so what do you do if you have a house on the countryside you can have a solar panel on your roof and it's always good to make decisions that there are environment in mind we have to consume responsibly and it's up to the government to ensure that we don't use that much coal or that we get away from our old means of energy production thank you very much for your insights there are questions the European emission data do they also include ships? that's a good question I think it's only stationary plants concrete factories I think agricultural operations so nitrogen and ammonium are included but ships I think are not okay how many historical and legal information can be read from the API well all these legal issues regarding the Dutch Renfier plant for example that is my own research the list of power plants will only give me information you can see this here too so you can see when it was put into operation what the load was when it was decommissioned or switched off but all the legal details are extra research and it's not a real API it's not something that I can do via HTTP request I don't need the ready data these are mainly Excel sheets, CSV files you can actually choose the format in the power plant list CSV is one of the formats there too the EU data is available as an SQLite database but the smart data only as CSV okay one more question why do you use Google Maps and not OSM? yeah good question I thought at the time that Google Maps would be simpler to use but from a political or privacy point of view OpenStreetMap would have been superior and I do have to go back to the site because the identification isn't happening via GPS data at the moment which is actually available but via the name of the power plant which means that some of these plants are misattributed so if I work on this again I might switch it to OpenStreetMap alright are you going to put up the slides on pre-talks so we can download them? the interpreters would have loved the slides too I think I will upload the slides I'll have to go through the images I used but most of these are screenshots from either PlantWatch or the North Rhombus Failion state portal the data that they offer that is yeah I think I will well personally I'm very interested in Dutton 4 that's because of my personal history I did my driver's license there so I grew up in the area but many people have difficulties understanding the different characteristics of power plants nuclear plants for example have a very consistent performance and they can run very stately for a very long time a gas plant is very easy to switch on and off especially the one in Kiel that starts so very quickly that you mentioned well we don't always have wind and we don't always have sun so that has an influence on how much power we have readily available can you elaborate on that? yeah back to the competition because there you can see for one you looking at the let's start with this one so you can see that currently solar panels are in spring of course so solar panels actually deliver some energy so there is power consumption in some color and other colors generation so you have biomass that is available yes but in medium term we will have to rely on plants that can be regulated and switched on and off on the other hand the red line by the way is consumption but on the other hand the ICPP IPCC report that was published tells us that we have little time left so we should start straight away to extend wind and solar power and there are many other power stations power plants there is a heating plant that went into operation in the late 60s which was actually considered relevant to the system because it we have many nuclear power stations in the southern states of Bavaria and Sweden back I have no silver bullet solution here how we can reach where we have to get to but we can see from Spain and the UK that even without large amounts of nuclear power you can get quite far and looking at the Nordic states you see the tips of Norway and Sweden on the map too they are suited because they have a lot of water power available a form of energy that is available around the clock of course does that answer your question to some extent yeah basically I think there is a lack of knowledge basically what different kinds of power plants we have since people's naive idea of power plants is that they just generate power all of the time and deliver it directly to our power outlets I was about do you take it to a kind that different power plants just have different characters so to speak so that was my idea because we are looking at coal power stations here but there are others as well I have coal and then there are gas plants which means that they don't use coal that is ground down gas and that is then burnt and then the ignition of the gases that result are used directly and you can have a second stage that makes it gas and steam and then there is photovoltaics of course so that is silicon basically much like computer chips on the sun shining then there is wind power which as we have seen from last week can produce a lot more energy than it does now so that fluctuates then there is biomass so that could be waste it could also be maize which is then fermented then there is gas that way which is then burnt then we have a small share of waste incineration much of it is actually added to coal plants and burnt in the same process and then there are some specific plants to burn that then we have the little water energy that we have naturally and some storage and that is about it and yes gas plants are quickest to regulate we have a gradient here about 90 megawatts per minute or in this coastal plant in Kiel from 0 to 4 capacity in 5 minutes that is remarkable coal plants would use 4 to 8 hours for that and it is not really the case that nuclear plants were completely inflexible other countries do throttle them but since Germany is exiting from nuclear power and gas has become much more expensive that does mean that it is worth for operators to keep the nuclear plants running constantly it is not an absolute necessity they can be regulated more or less like modernish coal plants you have to have cost efficiency in mind but if you are interested in having both things at the same time that is a big challenge exiting nuclear power and coal at the same time we would have to have a new technology ready that is very efficient and now we have killed the solar industry in the past 10 or 20 years and now if you want to have solar power you have to order from China and that is just controversial in itself if you want to have renewable energy here you have to ship the parts from the other side of the world that is absurd absolutely I agree that is absurd my grandfather has photovoltaic modules on his roof that are locally made but by now all these companies have either been shut down or have turned into resellers for Chinese products so it has to be said that politics the then federal government together with the industry has made a choice that was simply a failure in terms of state economics and we can see in the city of Rostock and at the Baltic Sea where a plant is closing a production facility a wind plant because they can only produce the rotors up to a certain size and these rotors have expanded in size so much that this kind of production isn't worth anymore maybe we can have a chat for that in the breakout room