Energiewende in Germany, transition énergétique in France, energy bill in Great Britain… European countries are overhauling their energy policies to face climate change and resources scarcity and to cope with their public opinion. In this context, electricity production statistics are becoming controversial: the percentage of nuclear in French mix or the dynamic of coal-fired electricity production in Germany may have huge political significance.
Unfortunately in many occasion it became obvious that policy makers ignore these data. One famous example in France is the 2007 presidential debate between Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy where neither of them was able to give an exact figure regarding the share of nuclear in French electricity generation (while of course accusing the other of being wrong). This example is really cartoonish, but the scenario is too common: energy debates often disregard facts and are reduced to an ideological confrontation.
Yet it is quite easy to fact-check affirmation regarding electricity generation. Power companies have made great transparency efforts and, provided you know the addresses and the available tools, you can know everything from the production of electricity in Europe minute by minute: how North Sea wind farms are performing right now? Is France currently importing or exporting electricity? What is the share of renewable energies in the German production today? The answers are here...
(This post was translated from the original in French : Comment suivre en direct la production d'électricité des principaux pays européens ?)
In France: RTE Eco2mix
The Eco2mix service is provided by the French electricity grid (RTE). It is available in English and gives a complete and ergonomic overview of the state of electricity production in France: instant production from each energy source, carbon footprint of one kilowatt-hour, trans-border flows... All these data are available with a 15 minutes pace over the last 3 months. In addition, a regional version was recently created.In Germany and Austria
Data on the German electricity production are available on the portal of the Fraunhofer Institute, including daily production and spot price.In addition, the European Energy Exchange, the energy market place for Central Europe, provides extensive data on the production of electricity in Germany, Austria and a few other countries.
In Great Britain
The British service shines by its comprehensiveness more than by its user-friendliness… But with a little patience you may find anything you can possibly want like the evolution of production by source, detailed wind generation or international flows.In Denmark
Denmark is often praised for its energy policy. You want to check? Energienet, the Danish power grid, offers an interactive map on which productions and flows for both electricity and gas appear in real time.
In Spain
The Spanish grid, Red Electrica Espana, also provides a monitoring of the production from each energy source in real-time. Advantage of this service: it offers a remarkably long history as it is possible to find data for any day since 2007!In Belgium
Elia offers lots of information but the real time tracking is available for wind and solar. For a complete picture, you can check the prevision at D-1 and the actual production at D+1.More data are available from the European Energy Exchange.
