Project CO2 Monitoring Device for French Electrical Production

This project involves the creation of a device that displays real-time CO2 emissions impact from electrical production in France. It uses an ESP8266 microcontroller and a set of LEDs to visually represent the data.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• How It Works
• Required
• Getting started
• Usage
• Configuration

Introduction

Climate change is a major challenge humanity is facing, and reducing CO2 emissions is crucial to mitigate its effects. This project aims to raise awareness about the impact of electrical production on CO2 emissions in France. This project is a box that displays the carbon impact of French electricity production in real time using a set of LEDs.

How It Works

This system uses real-time electrical production data from RTE to compute and display the associated carbon footprint. It relies on predefined carbon equivalence values for generating one kilowatt-hour of electricity in each sector.

The total carbon emissions are determined by multiplying the production share in each sector by the respective carbon equivalence value. In case of an error in obtaining the energy mix, a predetermined value of mean production share by sector.

The formula for calculating the global carbon footprint $(eCO_2)_{global}$ is as follows:

$(eCO_2){global} = \sum{i\ \in\ product_sector} (eCO_2){sector_i} \times \frac{Product{\ i}}{Product_{\ total}}$

Electricity Generation Sector	Carbon Emissions Equivalency (g of eCO2 per 1 kWh)	Average Power Output (MW)
Fossil Hard Coal	1 060	456
Fossil Oil	730	122
Fossil Gas	418	4 238
Bioenergy	494	1 123
Wind	14	4 299
Solar	43	1 696
Nuclear	6	39 924
Hydro	6	6 920

Data Sources: economiedenergie.fr, youmatter.world, and historic RTE data

Required

To build this device, you will need the following components:

• ESP8266
• A set of 10 LEDs (e.g., RGB LEDs)
• USB power supply for the ESP8266
• Arduino IDE configure for ESP8266 Card
• Internet access to making calls to three APIs: :
  • rte-france.com/open_api/actual_generation/v1/generation_mix_15min_time_scale 1 call every 10 minutes
  • rte-france.com/token/oauth 1 call every 2 hours
  • worldtimeapi.org/api/timezone/Europe/Paris 1 call every 4 hours

Getting started

1. Create an RTE API Account

   • Visit the website data.rte-france.com and create an account.
   • Create an application with associated APIs, specifically the "Actual Generation" API.

2. Hardware Setup

   • Solder the 10 LEDs together, ensuring you follow the correct pin connections.
   • Connect the Vcc pin to 5V, the GND (Ground) pin to GND, and the "dint" pin to pin 2 on your board (you can customize the pin in "led.h": #define PIN - please note that these pins may not match the board markings; verify online).

3. Clone this GitHub Repository to Your Computer

   git clone https://github.com/your-username/co2-electrical-production-france.git#CO2_EMISION_ELEC_PRODUCTION
   

4. Configure API Credentials

   Inside the src folder, create a file named secret.cpp and add the following code:

   #include "secret.h"
   
   const char SSID[] = "${name_wifi}";
   const char PASSWORD[] = "${code_wifi}";
   const char RTE_PASS[] = "Basic ${identifiant_secret_RTE}";
   

   Note: The identifiant_secret_RTE can be found in the 'application' section on the RTE website. Please click on the 'copier 64' button.

5. Upload the Code

   Connect the card to the laptop and upload the code using the Arduino IDE.

Usage

• When the board is connected, it will make an attempt to establish a Wi-Fi connection. During this process, it will blink as demonstrated below, continuing until it successfully.

• If the board successfully connects to the Wi-Fi network, it can initiate different requests. When a request succeeds, the LED will flash in green, and in case of failure, it will flash in red. In the event of a failure, the program will retrieve data from the average energy mix.

• Subsequently, the LEDs will illuminate individually, and the quantity of illuminated LEDs corresponds to the carbon emissions of electricity production, as illustrated in this table:

  Number of Leds ON	Equivalent CO2	Average Duration with as least this number of LEDs ON ( fraction of the time)
  1	20 g/kWh	100 %
  2	35 g/kWh	88 %
  3	40 g/kWh	80 %
  4	45 g/kWh	71 %
  5	50 g/kWh	63 %
  6	55 g/kWh	56 %
  7	65 g/kWh	39 %
  8	75 g/kWh	21 %
  9	85 g/kWh	7.5 %
  10	100 g/kWh	0.5 %

Data Sources: Historic RTE data (2021 -> 2023)

Configuration

Color Leds

In the src/leds.cpp file, you have the ability to modify the LED colors in two ways:

• You can change the two colors that form the gradient. firstColor corresponds to the color of the first LED when the carbon footprint is low, and lastColor represents the color of the last LED, which only lights up when the carbon impact is significant.

• The variables successColor and failureColor allow you to customize the color that flashes when a request to the APIs succeeds or fails, respectively.

const int firstColor[3] = { ${Red_value}, ${Green_value}, ${Blue_value} };
const int lastColor[3] = { ${Red_value}, ${Green_value}, ${Blue_value} };
byte successColor[3] = { ${Red_value}, ${Green_value}, ${Blue_value} };
byte failureColor[3] = { ${Red_value}, ${Green_value}, ${Blue_value} };

// Each value corresponds to the intensity of each color, represented as an integer ranging from 0 to 255

Color Leds