Energy resources
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What this model shows
The town and its weather are a model. The town needs the same power every day: 5 MW in the middle of the night, up to 14 MW in the early evening, 220 MWh a day. Each hour the wind, the sunlight, the tides and the waves are used first; power they give beyond what the town needs is switched off, because the town has no store and no link to other towns. Then the dam is used while its reservoir has water, then the gas station if it is on.
The week’s weather is made up: windy at the start of the week, almost calm on Thursday and Friday; sunny or cloudy days. The gas station is taken as 40 % efficient, with 0.2 t of carbon dioxide for every MWh of gas burnt. Real power stations, wind farms and dams are much bigger, and real towns share a national grid.
A week is shown at 2 seconds a day; the graph steps once an hour.
With reduced motion each run happens at once: the graph shows the whole week, the tiles stand on their sites, and nothing in the valley moves.
Select equipment to read its description in the card.