SPW trusted 3E to develop the Wallonia Dynamic Map. To determine the historical, real-time and predicted electricity production, 3E combines different data sources:
· aggregated historical and near real-time data* with a frequency of 15 minutes for the electricity production from solar panels, the electricity production from onshore and offshore wind turbines and the total grid load: source Elia (Belgian transmission system operator);
· historical, near real-time data and predictions for solar radiation and wind speeds, and the electricity production derived from this by solar panels and wind turbines in Wallonia: source 3E Data Services;
· resource forecasts (wind, solar irradiance, and temperature): source European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMFW) and Global Forecast System (GFS).
· the installed capacity of solar panels and onshore wind (on land) turbines in each Walloon municipality: source SPW.
· the installed capacity of offshore wind turbines in the North Sea: source Elia;
· number of inhabitants per municipality: source SPW;
· electricity consumption of an average Flemish family = 3500 kWh / year or 9.6 kWh / day:
· CO2 factor of the conventional electricity sector, a Combined Cycle Gas Turbine plant on natural gas = 456 kg CO2/MWh: source CWaPe,
The real-time electricity production by solar panels and onshore wind turbines level starts from Elia (Belgian transmission system operator) data. Since Elia does not monitor the installed capacity of all wind and solar power installations, the data must be corrected. In addition, the capacity that Elia monitors is growing. To account for both elements, Elia's solar and wind production is first rescaled to the full installed capacity per technology, thanks to the data provided by SPW-Energie (Public Service of Wallonia – Belgium). This gives the corrected real-time energy produced in Wallonia but doesn't yet give an indication of how much each municipality produces since Elia delivers aggregate data for the whole of Belgium.
The production data for solar and onshore wind (on land) is broken down per municipality based on the resource forecast, the installed capacity of solar panels and onshore wind (on land per municipality) turbines per municipality, and 3E in-house simulation models.
The Data Services from 3E are also used for historical data for solar radiation. The time series of energy production from solar panels, which Elia offers at the provincial level, allow calculating the production at the municipal level.
Historical wind speeds are obtained using the ReAnalysis dataset (ERA5). The historical energy production by wind turbines at municipal level is calculated using these wind speeds, the installed power per municipality and the power curve of an average wind turbine (this curve shows the relationship between wind speed and the produced power).
The real-time electricity production by offshore wind turbines also starts from the Elia data. Because Elia fully monitors the electricity production of offshore wind turbines, it is not rescaled.
Moreover, real-time electricity load data are taken from Elia and updated every hour. However, this load data is for the whole of Belgium. To get a load estimation for Wallonia, a scale factor of 0.33 is used.
Finally, the production and load data per day are stored. At the end of the day, it is checked whether a certain record has been reached, e.g. most renewable energy production. Every month, the energy production per domain of the entire month is stored as well.
* Near real-time means that the data shows the current situation or a few minutes less. These data are renewed every 15 minutes.
