Tag: Sweden

Living Sankey Diagrams

A reader of the blog, Olov, has produced the following video. He calls this a “Living Sankey Diagram”. The background can be found on the Sweco Blog (in Swedish). Basically he suggests to take energy declarations for buildings (‘Energideklarationen’) one step further and have visual energy monitoring for building using realtime data.

Energy consumption of a house is shown over a period of a year with up to 3 or 4 datasets per day. We can see heat (red) and electricity (orange). Not sure about the temperature indication at the top left, possibly meant to be the difference to a default temperature (Olov, if possible, please explain by commenting below).

Main consumers in the building are hot water generation (‘Tappvarmvatten’), room heating (‘Radiatorer’), ventilation and cooling. Some PV cells (‘Solceller’) at times add to the purchased energy (‘Köpt Energi’). The pink flow shows heat recovery (‘Värmeåtervinning’). The building is classified in energy class B.

Here, a data series has been used to produce the Sankey diagrams and then the frames were converted to a video. This makes for a nice effect and allows watching your energy flows in retrospect. For example, the PV cells feed energy mostly during the months, while in the same period heat demand and recovery is very limited.

This was apparently produced using e!Sankey. To really do an energy monitoring and produce the Sankey diagram every couple of minutes, there is a software development kit (SDK) the allows linking to a data source (energy measurement data) and pushing the “living Sankey diagram” to a website. Another example can be found here.

Energy Flows in Sweden by Counties

Sweden is administratively organized in 21 counties, called “Sveriges län”.

A new report ‘Energistatistik för Sveriges län och kommuner för år 2013’ (Energy Statistics for Swedish Counties and Municipalities on the year 2013), published by Länsstyrelsernas Energi- och Klimatsamordning (LEKS) features energy flow Sankey diagrams for all counties.

Here is an example for Skåne from page 17:

All flows in GWh per year. Percentage breakdown for contribution of fuels (left side) and for consumption (right side).

Actually the energy picture looks quite differently in some counties: For example, Södermanlands län (on page 19) has 33% coal/coke (‘Kol/Koks’). Kronobergs län’s most important energy source with a share of 29% is biomass (‘Biobränsle’).

Twenty-one wonderful Sankey diagrams … a sheer joy for a Sankey fan like me.

Sweden’s Energy Balance

Julien Morel of the Swedish Energy Agency (‘Energymyndigheten’) has pointed me to the newly released Swedish Energy Balance for 2014.

The publication (available here) has the English version of the diagram on page 4:


This one is interesting, as it is set up mirrored, to be read from right to left, in contrast to the common way of presenting national energy flows (e.g. here for Australia or here for Iran).

Overall consumption was 368 TWh in 2014. Sweden relies roughly one third on nuclear energy, one third on fossil fuels, and one third on renewables (wind, hydro and biofuels).

The different areas of the energy system are further detailed per consuming sector and per fuel type and shown with individual Sankey diagrams. So if you understand some Swedish, go check out the 17-page presentation.

Colorful Energy Sankey Diagram

A colorful Sankey diagram for energy flows from Sweden. Found this one on the web page of Länsstyrelsen Skåne (please don’t ask me to read this out loud…) in an article titled ‘Skånska hushåll i fronten för mindre fossilberoende’

Unit of flows is TWh. The orange arrows are imports, the other arrows from the left apparently domestic production, with the majority of energy being from fossil fuels (“Fossilt”). Consuming sectors are at the bottom – in contrast to the typical layout of this kind of energy balance diagrams.

Anyone from Sweden who wishes to comment and explain a little bit?

The Beauty of Sankey Diagrams

End-of-year cleanup of my bookmarks and saved diagrams. There are more goodies, and enough in stock for a couple of posts next year…

Below are three image sections of a Sankey diagram showing Swedish energy flows in 2007. These were published on p. 54/55 in the report ‘Energy in Sweden 2008’ by Swedish Energy Agency (Energimyndigheten). Numbers are in TWh, source for the diagram was Statistics Sweden data.

The first diagram (which is the left part of the diagram) shows the total 624 TWh energy supplied and the energy sources. The second one is the breakdown of energy produced by sectors, and also shows the losses in energy conversion. The third on is a different breakdown of the 404 TWh by energy carrier.

Nothing more to add. They are simple, clean, beautiful.

Next stop … Sweden!

My Sankey diagram tour around the Baltic Sea continues. After stops in Estonia and Poland, today it is Sweden.

The diagram below is from the website of the energy provider of the Swedish city Lund.

This diagram is in GWh. It shows the different energy sources used in Lund on the left side, like wind energy (“Vindkraft”, 4 GWh) or geothermal energy (“Geotermisk värme”, 183 GWh). The largest portion (1960 GWh) is electrical energy purchased. The arrows on the right hand side show as what type the energy is being consumed: electricity, heat, cold and gas.

I like this diagram for its ‘blockish style” and the very strict horizontal orientation. The fact that certain flow quantities are branching off to join other arrows is indeed rather difficult to depict. You can see – especially on a b/w printout of the PDF file (on their old website) – that they were struggling with this, but they smoothed it nicely with color gradient effects.

If you take out your pocket calculator (and that’s what I always do!), you will come up with a difference of 244 GWh (“inputs” on the left 3361 GWh, “outputs” on the right 3117 GWh). Might this be attributed to transformation losses?