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Help:Making realistic energy networks

Fundamentals

A camp fire used to cook food.

Energy (literally) runs the world. Human civilization arguably started with humans learning to purposefully use fire for clearing forests, cooking food, heating, and rituals. Today, all aspects of society and the build environment - and hence maps - are shaped by how we generate and use energy to extract resources, produce goods, and transport them and ourselves. Thinking about how energy is generated, distributed and used in your country is therefore a key but often overlooked aspect of realistic map-making. Below, I've written out some (incomplete and likely flawed) guidance on how to get started thinking about these topics for your own mapping project.

First, let's get some terminology out of the way:

The terms energy and electricity are sometimes used interchangeably in everyday life, but they aren't. You use energy to heat your house, but that energy can come to your house in a tank truck as oil which is then burned, it can be delivered through long-distance heating from a nearby power plant, or as electricity running an electric heater. Electricity is however a very versatile medium for energy distribution, as it can be generated from many sources, distributed at light-speed, and used for almost all activities involving energy consumption.

As any physics teacher will be quick to point out to you, no form of energy, including electricity, is truly "created" or "produced" - energy can only be transformed from one state to the other, under the constraint of rising entropy. For the sake of this article's legibility, we won't get too hang up on this terminology.

Lastly, energy (and, hence, also electricity) consumption can be measured at various points between generation and use. For the sake of this simplified tutorial, we will only focus on two: energy production (EP), that is the energy leaving a power plant as electricity or oil from a refinery; and final energy consumption (FEC), that is the amount of energy the consumer is billed for, e.g. electricity. For many forms of energy transfer, losses between these two stages are small. If you extend your calculations beyond the reach of this tutorial, e.g. calculate your nation's coal consumption, keep in mind that not all of the energy inside a piece of coal being burned in a coal power plant makes it to the power grid in the first place.

Very commonly, energy consumption is recorded separately by economic sectors. The way statistics are recorded differs between countries, but a common definition differentiates between Transport, Industry, Households, and Services. Since the type of energy sources used differs strongly between these sectors and each country will have a distinct share of energy consumption per sector, we use these sectors as a starting point to estimate energy demand for your country.

Lastly, some physics. Energy is measured in Joule (expressed as [J], or [kg*m^2/s^2]). One joule is the amount of energy needed to lift ca. 102 g by one meter in earth's gravity, or heat one gram of water by 0.24 degrees Celsius. From your power-bill, you are most likely used to the unit Watt (or [W]). Watt describes the rate of energy usage: one Watt means one Joule per second, or [J/s]=[kg*m^2/s^3]. On your power-bill (at least in Europe), you will most likely see price and consumption measured in Watt-hours, or [Wh]=[J/s*h]. One Wh is the amount of energy used if you consume energy at the rate of one Watt, for one hour. If you look at the SI notation carefully, you can see that Watt-hour is somewhat of a misleading unit: we first divide by time to get from Joule to Watt, and then multiply with time to get to Watt-hour. For this reason, we can easily convert between Joule and Watt-hour: 1*Wh = 1*J/s*h = 1*J/s*3600s = 3600*J. Lastly, all units can be exponentiated by 1000, one million, one billion, and one trillion using the prefixes kilo- [k], mega- [M], giga- [G], and tera- [T], respectively. For instance, one Giga-Watt-hour is 1,000,000,000 Wh, which in turn is equal to 3,600,000,000,000 J, or in short: 3.6 TJ.

Final Energy Consumption (FEC) per sector

A morning in Nordicland.

When thinking about energy production and consumption in your country, you can start by looking at the per-capita FEC of real-world countries similar to what you plan. The following table contains data converted from The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports. If you know other sources, please let me know so I can add them! You will likely have to research your own data if your country does not closely mirror any of the examples below.

	FEC per capita and year [MWh]
Country	Transport	Industry	Households	Services
China	2.6	9.3	3.1	0.8
Germany	7.4	7.5	7.6	3.8
Nigeria	1.1	0.4	1.3	0.2
US	21.2	9.6	9.4	7.3
Nordicland	13	5	11	4

Some things to consider when choosing per-capita FEC per sector for your country:

• How rich is your country? Energy consumption is almost directly (though not linearly) tied to GDP. A country where people struggle to pay for food will use only a fraction of the energy of a country where people have money left over to go on long car trips and heat swimming pools.
• How cheap is energy overall? A country with plentiful cheap energy resources (e.g., US, Russia) will likely be less incentivised to save energy across all sectors than a country that has to import most of its enery sources (e.g. Germany, France)

• How important is energy-intensive industry (e.g., steel-works or chemical industry) for your country's economy? This will determine the amount of energy industry demands.
• How much do your people travel in every-day life, and do the do so mostly by train and bus, or by car, which uses more energy?
• What is the climate of your country like? Especially for households in cold or temperate countries, heating usually is the largest consumer of energy. Between countries with such a climate, the degree to which houses are insulated also makes a large difference. Countries in very hot regions, especially if rich, will in turn use a lot of energy for airconditioning.

For this tutorial, let's imagine a hypothetical nation called "Nordicland". It has little heavy industry, but it's very rich, cold, and car-dependent. It has a population of 10 million people. Based on the table, let's assume a yearly per capita FEC of 13, 5, 11, and 4 MWh for transport, industry, households, and services, respectively. Multiplying with the population we arrive at total yearly FECs of 130, 50, 110, and 40 TWh for each sector.

Energy sources

Total world energy consumption by source (without differentiation by electric/non-electric).

After deciding on the sectors' yearly FEC values, we now think about what sources of energy are used by each sector to fullfill its demand. For example, transportation for the most part still runs on oil, but electric vehicles (including trains, although their contribution to total consumption is negligible due to their high efficiency in terms of energy/passenger) can also mean transportation consumes electricity. While some countries use electricity to heat, others use oil or gas (sometimes from a central power-plant through long-distance heating). The list goes on. Again, you will most likely have to take inspiration from real world countries that you try to emulate, and then diverge from that starting point. Note that electricity is of course not the "real" source of energy; electricity itself can be generated in oil, coal, or nuclear power plants, in wind turbines, solar cells, etc. But for the sake of this calculation, we just look at the way the energy arrives at the end consumer, and we'll worry about how that electricity is generated later. While this differentiation would not be needed to know just how much oil our country consumes, we do need this differentiation to know how many oil power plants and power lines we need.

Getting sector-specific data on energy sources (not just electricity) is challenging. Again, let's look at data from IEA. We can see that in France, the majority of energy used by industry comes from electricity and gas. In China on the other hand, coal plays a much more dominant role. Go through some countries that you feel like are similar to Nordicland and have a look at what share of their energy consumption in each sector comes from what source. Some things to think about:

• What sources are suitable for each sector? For transportation, oil and electricity are almost the only options. In industry, especially heavy industry, coal, oil and gas are often needed for intense heating processes and not easily replaced by electricity. Household heating can be done both through electricity and combustion processes. And services often are similar to households in terms of energy sources, since restaurants, offices and shops use energy in similar ways to residential buildings.
• What sources are cheap and available? If your country has gushing oil wells, it will likely try to use that oil.

Looking at real-world data, you will see that there are often some niche energy sources with little share, like bio-fuels and waste. You decide how detailed you want to get; don't be afraid to use a category "others". For Nordicland, let's assume it's in the middle of transitioning from combustion engines to electric cars; the little industry it has is comparatively light and uses a lot of gas and electricity; and it's households and services use oil and gas for heating and electricity otherwise. After entering these made-up percentages in the table below and multiplying with the total FEC of each sector from the previous section, we then obtain the total FEC of each sector for each energy source. Lastly, we add up the FEC of each energy source across sectors (right-hand column).

Nordicland	Transport	Industry	Households	Services	Total
Total [TWh]	130	50	110	40	330
Electricity [%]	30%	40%	30%	40%
[TWh]	39	20	33	16	108
Coal [%]		5%
[TWh]		2.5			2.5
Oil [%]	70%	5%	30%	25%
[TWh]	91	2.5	33	10	136.5
Gas [%]		40%	30%	25%
[TWh]		20	33	10	63
Other [%]		10%	10%	10%
[TWh]		5	11	4	20

The most important output of this step (for now) is your total electricity consumption: 108 TWh per year (or, having time cancel with itself, a power output of 108TWh/year/(8766h/year) = 12.3 GW).

Electricity production

For this section, we assume that Nordicland does not import or export electricity. If your country is a net importer or exporter, you can adjust the necessary domestic electricity production downwards or upwards, respectively.

Electricity mix

World net electricity generation by source

Electricity can be produced in many different ways, both renewable and non-renewable, and electricity mixed vary wildly across the globe. We want to calculate how much power plant capacity we need for each electricity source, so we need to think about what share of electricity is generated by which source. Again, it's best to take inspiration from real world countries. Some nations, like Iceland or Norway, are blessed with natural renewable power sources and have a low population density, allowing them to generate most of their power with geothermal and hydro-electric power plants, respectively. Countries with oil or coal reserves again will try to capitalize on these resources. Most other countries rely on a mix of various sources of electricity.

Globally, coal is still the largest source for electricity according to the IEA. From the same source, we can also have a look at country specific electricity (not energy!) mixes. For Nordicland, let's assume it has lots of potential for hydro-electric power, but also imports some fossil fuels, has one nuclear power plant, and tries to increase other renewable sources.

	Share of electricity production [%]
Country	Solar	Hydro	Biomass	Wind	Gas	Oil	Coal	Nuclear	Other
China	5	15	2	9	3	0	62	5	0
Germany	12	5	8	27	17	1	27	1	2
Nigeria	0	24	0	0	76	0	0	0	0
US	5	6	1	10	42	1	17	18	0
Nordicland	1	25	2	30	20	1	10	10	1

Load factor and grid loss

Power lines and substations are essential not only to get electricity from the power plant to the consumer, but also to balance the load between different sources.

After deciding on our energy mix, we need to clarify a few terms again. The peak power of a power plant is the maximum amount of energy it can put into the power grid per second. The average power is the amount of power that it actually outputs on average per second, over a whole year.

For some sources, these values are very close together. Nuclear power plants for example are very expensive to build and take a long time to spin up, so they are usually ran at full capacity and only shut down for maintenance. Solar on the other hand only produces its maximum power output on a sunny day during noon, and much less or nothing during other times. For other sources, the ratio will depend on how the respective power source is used in that country; for example, hydro-electric and gas power plants can either be ran flat-out, or used to fill the gap when wind and solar are tanking, depending on the policy of your country. For wind and solar, load factor also depends on the climate. The ratio of average to peak power is called load factor.

Let's try to estimate load factors for Nordicland. We can start by looking at data from Germany. Additionally, let's say that hydro-electric and gas power are used a demand-responsive source, and that Nordicland has little sunshine, resulting in low load factors. Most of the wind is off-shore, where wind blows more constant than on land. For your own country, these values can vary.

Also, we now account for the difference between EP and FEC mentioned in the beginning: you need a little more power plant output than what your consumers use, because a sizable part is lost on the power grid. This depends on how technologically advanced your country is and how far power has to travel between source and consumer. As a rule of thumb, this grid loss should be between 5 and 10%. Since Nordicland is thinly populated and some of the electricity has to travel far to the urban centers, let's assume a value of 8%.

Based on the load factor and grid loss, we can now calculate the ratio of necessary peak power output to average power consumption. This ratio is calculated as R = (1 + grid loss) / load factor. As you can see, based on our assumption we need almost 11 times as much solar power as indicated by the solar cell's peak output to generate a given average consumption. For nuclear on the other and, we only need a little more peak power output than what we actually consume on average.

For the column av. power consumption [GW], we simply multiply each electricity source's share in Nordicland with our total electricity consumption of 108 TWh/year, divide by 8760 to get from TWh/year to TW, and then multiply by 1000 to get to GW. For solar, this is 0.01 * 108[TWh/year] / 8760[h/year] * 1000 = 0.12[GW].

Now we multiply our ratio R with the av. power consumption to reach necessary peak power output.

Electricity source	Load factor [%]	Grid loss [%]	R	Av. power consumption [GW]	Nec. peak power output [GW]
Solar	10	8	1080,0%	0.21	2.27
Hydro	20	8	540,0%	5.14	27.76
Biomass	50	8	216,0%	0.41	0.89
Wind	23	8	469,6%	6.16	28.93
Gas	30	8	360,0%	4.11	14.80
Oil	20	8	540,0%	0.21	1.13
Coal	50	8	216,0%	2.05	4.42
Nuclear	90	8	120,0%	2.05	2.46
Other	50	8	216,0%	0.21	0.45

Before proceeding to the next step, run a plausibility check: If all non-controllable sources (especially wind and solar) are shut down completely, can you still satisfy your average electricity demand by increasing the load factor of your controllable sources to 100% and some imports? For Nordicland, this is easy: since hydro-electric power has a load factor of 20% but accounts for 25% of average electricity consumption, even if all other sources were to shut down the country could meet its electricity demand by running all of its dams at maximum capacity - until the reservoirs run out of water that is.

Power Plants

In this section, we use the necessary peak power output from the previous section to estimate number and size of power plants we need per electricity source. The figures in this section are just meant to give you an idea for the scale and how to approach this topic - for each energy source one can go into much more detail than presented here. Also, this guide does not focus on how to accurately map, e.g., a coal power plant. But once you know the number and peak power output of your power plants, you can search for appropriate real-world examples more easily.

Solar

File:Installation of solar PV panels - panels in place - geograph.org.uk - 2624288.jpg

Solar panels on a residential building.

Photovoltaic cells convert sunlight into electricity through the photovoltaic effect, where photons excite electrons in a semiconductor material, typically silicon. This movement of electrons creates an electric current within the cell. Multiple PV cells are combined in solar panels to generate usable power for various applications.

The climate of territory should already be partially considered in the load factor; regions with constant sunshine will have a higher load factor than those that are mostly cloudy. For this calculation, we will assume that climate and location have no further influence on the efficiency of your solar electricity production. That is a simplification of course, as far from the equator the sun's angle changes a lot during the year, meaning solar panels do not catch the ideal amount of light all throughout the year, etc. When in doubt, just increase the final amount of solar panels needed by 10 to 50%, if your country (like Nordicland) is not very solar-friendly. Also, we do not look a solar thermal energy; for the sake of this tutorial, we will just assume that the electricity output is identical and therefore group them both under solar.

As peak power output, we can assume 200[W/m^2]. So, to get the total area of solar panels, just divide your peak power output by 200[W]. For Nordicland, this gives us 2,270,000,000[W] / 200[W/m^2] = 11350000 m^2 = 11.35 km^2. This can be distributed on top of buildings or on solar farms. Not a lot, but don't forget: solar only covers 1% of Nordicland's electricity needs.

Hydro

Note that while the other sources are explained relative to peak power output, hydro-electric power is explained relative to average power production. This is because precipitation and dam height restrict average power output, but peak power output can be increased freely by adding additional turbines and reducing the load factor. So, ignore what we calculated for load factor and just work with "Average power consumption" * (1+grid loss), or in the case of Nordicland: 5.14[GW] * 1.08 = 5.55[GW].

File:Barrage de la Grande-Dixence.jpg

Barrage de la Grande-Dixence, the tallest dam in Europe...

File:Rheinkraftwerk Iffezheim Ausbau 2011.jpg

... and a run-of-the-river power plant on the Rhine.

Hydro-electric power plants are restricted by geography. In this section, I'll therefore present a way to estimate the average power output of a dam based on its water throughput, height, and management. It is very likely that after setting yourself an ambitious target for hydro-electric power, as you try to find suitable locations you will find that you do not have enough hydro-electric potential in your country to produce that much electricity. In that case, after building out your hydro-electric potential, go back and reduce the share of hydro-electric power in your electricity production.

Let's start with some physics. Hydro-electric power plants generate electricity by converting the potential energy of stored water into electrical energy. Water stored in a reservoir at a high elevation has potential energy due to its height. When released, gravity causes the water to flow downward, and the amount of water and its height determine the total energy available. The flowing water turns turbines, which convert the water’s kinetic energy into mechanical energy. Finally, a generator connected to the turbine transforms this mechanical energy into electricity, which is then transmitted for use. Assuming 100% efficiency, the output of a hydro-electric power plant can be calculates as

P[W=kg*m^2/s^3] = height[m] * 9.81[m/s^2] * mass[kg] / time[s].

Height is the height difference between turbine and water surface. Note that the more water a dam releases, the less power it generates from every additional bit of water it releases, because the level of the reservoir and hence the potential energy of the water stored drops. In practice, this is a trade-off: for flood-prevention, dams should be kept at low water levels so that in the case of heavy rain or floods, the reservoir has empty space to store the incoming water instead of releasing it downstream. For maximum total power generation, the level in the reservoir should be kept as high as possible. And when used for load balancing, the water level should be kept somewhere in the middle, so that when e.g. wind and solar are running strong, the dam can be shut down and still have room to collect water, which it then releases when wind and solar are less productive. Seasonal factors also play a role. For your power calculation, as a rule of thumb, use half the structural height of the dam for your calculation. You can adjust this assumption based on what role the dam plays in your power grid relating to the points above. For a list of highest dams, see here. The vast majority of dams will be much, much smaller - for every dam 100 m in height, there will be dozens if not hundreds of smaller dams only a few meters in height.

9.81 is the gravitational force on earth. On a planet with stronger gravity, the energy production from a hydro-electric power plant would rise accordingly.

Mass per time is the amount of water, in kg, that is released per second. If you don't have good estimated for your stream or river flow, you can estimate it based on its catchment area and the average precipitation there. If your dam's water inlet collects water from a catchment area of 1,500 km^2 and the average precipitation per year is 700mm (in tall mountains, this value can be very high or very low, depending on the climate and the direction of the wind), that means it rains a total of 0.7m * 1,500,000,000m^2 / year = 1,050,000,000,000 kg/year. On average, that is . Watch our for the number of 0s; one km^2 is not one thousand but one million m^2, and one m^2 is one thousand kg. If the catchment area is very warm, reduce this amount of water to account for evaporation and other uses.

Lastly, be aware of a negative correlation between height and mass per time. Regard the two pictures on the right: Most dams that are very tall are located in narrow mountain valleys, where the catchment area and hence the amount of water flowing per second is low. The amount of water flow rises as we follow the stream and river downstream, however the topography will flatten out, too, meaning a dam there won't be able to reach hundreds or even just dozens of meters in height without needing to be extravagantly wide and flooding huge swaths of land. On large rivers, we therefore often see run-of-the-river hydroelectricity, where the water drops only a meter or two and no visible reservoir exists, but the vast amount of water means a considerable amount of electricity is generated nonetheless. Not that ships would need locks to traverse these power plants. There are rare exceptions where dams are both tall and dam up a major river, but those are considered engineering marvels and affect huge swathes of land.

Biomass

In many cases, biomass power plants are very small and co-located with agricultural businesses. For now, this tutorial therefore does not include any guidance on them.

Wind

File:Windmills D1-D4 (Thornton Bank).jpg

Off-shore wind turbines.

Wind turbines harness the kinetic energy of moving air by rotating a turbine which in turn generates electricity.

For wind, we need to differentiate between on-shore and off-shore. Since off-shore wind turbines run more consistently, the overall load factor of wind will depend on how much on-shore vs. off-shore turbines you have. Also, regions with more constantly strong wind will see a higher load factor than regions with frequent slumps. So, if you haven't done so already, go back to the load factor and try to find real world values from regions that are similar to yours.

After doing so, planning the amount of wind turbines based on the peak power output is pretty straight-forward. The only thing to keep in mind is that the peak output per turbine can vary a lot depending on its size, with turbines having gotten larger in recent decades. I suggest you differentiate both on-shore and off-shore turbines into a total of four categories and then assign each category numbers until you reach the total peak power output needed. For Nordicland, that sum we need to reach is 28.93 [GW]. Again, note that in most cases, for every large turbine there will be several smaller ones, so the smaller categories should always have more entries than the larger ones. Try to vary the number of turbines for each category until you reach the total power needed and have a realistic distribution across the turbine classes. When placing wind turbines, note that they need considerable room between them, otherwise they diminish each other's efficiency.

Type	Height/diameter [m]	Peak power [MW]	Number Nordicland	Power Nordicland [MW]
Small (on-shore)	50/30	0.5	6000	3000
Medium (on-shore)	80/50	3	2400	7200
Medium (off-shore)	160/80	7	1390	9730
Large (off-shore)	220/110	15	600	9000

Fuel for Coal, Oil and Gas Power Plants

How to calculate the amount

Import

Don't forget about non-electricity consumption!

Final Remarks on Electricity Production

When working through this section, don't hesitate to iterate your planning process; you might start out with a specific electricity mix and then realize that you don't have enough electricity sources that can be turned on when less reliable sources don't deliver, or you might realize during power plant planning that you don't have enough locations for dams to satisfy your desire for hydro-electric power. Also, don't be disappointed if you find it difficult or impossible to

Climate neutrality is hard.

The Future

Hydrogen: not source, but medium; industry, transportation

Fission