I recently came across a new interactive project on the UK electricity grid while doing some research, and I thought it would be worth sharing with the Energy Central community.
The UK Grid Atlas combines OpenStreetMap power infrastructure with live electricity data to provide a detailed visualisation of the UK's transmission network. According to the project, it maps around 3,600 power generation sites, the 400 kV and 275 kV transmission network, 132 kV transmission lines in Scotland, and integrates live generation data from Elexon's Open API. It also visualises power flows across the UK's interconnections and automatically distinguishes between onshore and offshore wind farms.
What I found particularly useful is how easy it is to move from a broad view of the electricity network to the performance of individual generating stations. Hovering over major plants reveals their half-hourly generation output, providing an interesting way to see how different technologies contribute to the grid throughout the day.
Another aspect that stood out is the quality of the underlying OpenStreetMap power data. The project notes that most major generating sites already include information such as plant names, operators, and installed capacity. Solar appears to be one of the few areas where the mapping is still less complete, offering an opportunity for contributors to improve the dataset.
I've only recently started exploring the atlas as part of my research into the UK electricity system, but it has already proved to be a useful reference for understanding how generation assets are distributed and how the transmission network is connected.
If you're interested in UK electricity infrastructure, grid operations, or energy data, it's definitely worth exploring.
References
Live Atlas:
https://jacobwright32.github.io/uk-grid-atlas/
Project Repository:
https://github.com/jacobwright32/uk-grid-atlas/
Has anyone else explored this atlas or used similar interactive grid visualisation tools? I'd be interested to hear which resources you find most useful for analysing the UK's electricity network.