vonadz

If you know anyone who might benefit from the data, let me know!

Because our priority is having the page load quickly, and having to load data for 3k+ counties on a national map would slow things down. The state view is a compromise between speed and giving the user enough info to then go more granular by checking the state view they're interested in.

The electricity provider there specifically asked us to not publish the data, and has gone to extensive lengths to block us from getting it.

Very few do. Only 155 utilities out of over 3,000

Thanks for catching that! Will get it fixed.

You can email me at tech at poweroutage.us if you want to talk.

Both!

Complex datasets are always in demand! I wish we'd gotten into something simpler, because in this specific case it's very high maintenance. The data sources constantly change and have no standard for reporting. We try to make it as simple as possible for people who need the information, so it's a lot of work on our side.

If you click on the state, you get a county view.

Yeah heard there is ice coming down in some places. Stay safe!

Hopefully they get power back soon. I'm one of the people behind the website, so if you have any questions, feel free to reach out! Especially if you're interested in the data :)

Yeah Visual Studio, not Visual Studio Code. The main issue is the new code is built using an old .NET framework that isn't supported by the C# plugins on Visual Studio Code.

I think you have some good points, especially when it comes to supporting other devs. The hosted dev boxes make sense, assuming it's not laggy / slow to develop on. Will explore the Azure Microsoft Dev Box option and see how it feels.

Thanks for this! I considered doing Windows cloud VMs, but just seemed like a hassle.

I'll try out Windows ARM with Parallels.

In this case we didn't acquire their hardware.

Yeah dual booting was the solution I was hoping to avoid, mostly because it's inconvenient to transfer information between the two systems on one machine, but it seems that's the most viable solution.

I looked at WINE, but read that specifically Visual Studio doesn't work very well on it.

Thank you! :)

Thanks for posting this! I'll look into testing ClipperLib as well. If it's 400x faster, that would be great.

What is the public benefit here for open data?

We believe that everyone benefits from knowing more about how, where, and by whom electricity is generated. My personal opinion is that there's a lot of BS in the electricity industry and making the actual data available is the best way to clear the stink.

Where is your code/pipeline published?

Our code/pipeline isn't published anywhere. https://findenergy.com/data/ gives a general idea of where all of the data is coming from (spoiler, it's all from the US government). I'm currently working on an internal tool that'll help us map data from source to where/how it's used on our site, but it's a pretty big undertaking and might take a while. In the mean time, we answer any and all specific questions that are submitted through the website (https://findenergy.com/contact/).

What is being done with this data?

Currently it's just being shown on the website. We also have reporters, students, and companies reaching out to us asking to use the data for articles, research, and reports respectively.

Who is benefiting and/or paying for this "research" on critical USA infrastructure?

We're hoping consumers are benefiting. No one is paying us for this work. We're just a couple of guys that are passionate about this data, think it should be available to consumers, and are trying to figure out how to make carrying out that service sustainable financially.

edit it seems that 3 months ago, we both commented on this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31555938

Yup! Your comment on marketed rates vs actual rates is very true. We calculate our rates by dividing the company's revenues by kWhs sold, so it should technically be closer to the actual rate.

What is "Find Energy" ?

We take a bunch of data relating to electricity, natural gas, and solar, make it understandable, then compile it all together on our website so people can get a good idea of the national/local energy landscape.

is this like far-away smart people digging through your garage to "find" tools ?

Although some would consider us "far-away smart people" (depending on their geographic location), rest assured that we're definitely not digging through your garage for anything.

Personal intros could definitely be an option, although no one jumps out, so I might have to take a more systematic approach.

Hmm, I didn't even consider accelerators (how ironic). I do think I have a couple of "weak" contacts there. Thanks for the tips! :)

"if blocking cellular signal is infeasible" - just get them signed up with AT&T, ZING!

On a more serious note, have you tried working in a public library rather than a coffee shop? Just ask the librarian to hold onto your phone while you're there.

Can attest to this. We used it to build https://findenergy.com which has over 15k pages and a TON of data.

Ugh, dammit. Thanks for catching that.

I recently took a similar approach for a couple of simple websites (https://abyteofcoding.com/survey/ and https://crosspromote.io), and found that surprisingly people don't really care that much. It's still very annoying to deal with responsive stuff (changing design based on screen size) though.

"[firework] packaging is designed to appeal to the main firework consumer demographic: men between the ages of 18 to 45" seems to be the only "clever strategy" mentioned.

Just for reference, 36,000 tons of CO2 is like the ~950th most polluting plant in the US (https://findenergy.com/power-plants/ for reference).

Sounds like you should be using a service for it.

Interestingly, energy use actually declined during the first year of the pandemic (I know for sure in the US, and probably globally). You can see it here for Texas, https://findenergy.com/tx/#overview , in the annual production graph, which is the state with the most production in the US. On a national level IIRC, it was approximately -4% from 2020 to 2021.

I wonder if people with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alopecia_universalis have them?

We have pretty thorough reviews of other popular batteries in this space (https://findenergy.com/solar/battery-storage/#most-popular-b...), in case anyone wants to compare.

Built this little tool as a weekend project and was pleasantly surprised that it lived up to the name (only took a weekend). Planning on keeping it free for the current core functionality and adding a paid sub level for ease-of-life features (keeping track of your surveys, integration with newsletter products for specifics on who said what, etc) if there's demand for it. I'm open to all feedback! This is the first of several little projects I'm making with the goal of monetization.

PS. if you're going to say something about the design, or lack thereof, the motivation is utility first, pretty later. If I can't get one user to use it as is, polishing won't improve the value prop.

The bots aren't perfect yet.