A little over a year ago, the Instrat Foundation team took on a great challenge – we created the first open energy data platform in Poland – energy.instrat.pl.
We believe that the energy debate should be based on reliable and verified data. Otherwise, it can be easily manipulated, and yet the fight against climate change is the most important economic and social challenge facing our society in the coming years.
To celebrate the platform’s anniversary, we decided to make a gift to all of its users and prepared a new version of our homepage, where you can now see up-to-date key information on the Polish power system from the last 24 hours, such as:
- Hourly energy production from selected sources (including RES).
- Percentage share of specific technologies in the production structure.
- Changes in energy prices and CO2 emission prices.
- Current carbon intensity of the Polish energy mix.
Thanks to gathering this information in one place, we can easily observe the positive impact of RES on energy prices and carbon intensity of the energy mix in Poland.
The last year was full of work for us on improving the platform. We are proud to note that in this pioneering endeavour over the last 12 months we have enhanced energy.instrat.pl with a number of features, including:
- Data on energy production and power losses at individual generating units, which are essential for assessing emergency situations at power plants such as the recent ones in Turów and Jaworzno.
- A map of power plants and an interactive generation cost calculator allowing for estimation of variable costs of coal units operation at different CO2 prices. The tool allows for monitoring how changes in emission allowance prices affect the cost of energy production in a given power plant, which translates indirectly into energy prices for households.
- Information about RES potential and the first interactive offshore map with the current status of individual projects, which allow to create alternative scenarios to the coal status-quo (several of such forecasts have also been posted on the platform).
- We added gas and oil prices, which are very important in the current commodity crisis that is causing energy prices across the European Union to skyrocket.
- A map and database of coal and lignite mines that feed into discussions about the social contract. Developed with particular emphasis on the economic and social aspects of mining companies and individual mines and their organizational units (movement, open pit, etc.).
The development of energy.instrat.pl and much of the above data has allowed us to create a proprietary energy model and many groundbreaking reports, which you may find on Instrat’s website.
The platform is based on the open source software plotly/dash and environmentally neutral Azure hosting. It was funded by: grants from the European Climate Foundation, support from CAN Europe, the Foundation’s own resources, the Microsoft Grants Program, and contributions from donors, which can be made through our Patronite account.