Over the years, the electricitymaps-contrib open source repository has been the home of many meaningful contributions. It enabled coders and programmers to directly add new zones, countries, or data sources. It also enabled non-code contributions from the community such as translations, pointing out where new data could be found, and insightful discussions about methodology. This has resulted in thousands of PRs and issues, many directly from you the contributors, and the rest based on your valuable feedback. The reach and impact Electricity Maps has significantly relied on your contributions and this community as a whole. Thank you, dear contributors, for making this possible.
The frontend code has recently been removed from the electricitymaps-contrib repository's master branch, mainly so we can unify the experience and platform. This also allows us to deeply integrate our existing datasets and new signals. These new signals are tightly coupled with our internal systems to provide the best possible experience, and therefore fit better in our internal repository. Don't worry, the last open-sourced version of the frontend code can still be accessed here: https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-contrib/tree/2b38e9e5746ac87fcae506a2d954bd3da28f6150.
This change allows us to shift our open-source focus to where you, our contributors and local experts, can help us the most: the data collection. We want to double down on ensuring we are sourcing correct data, keep maintaining its integrity over time, as well as integrating new signals and data sources.
Our goal is to expand our parsers, the core data collection method we use, to cover even more data types, signals, and regions, while simultaneously increasing the quality of existing ones.
We plan on splitting out the static values, such as capacities and carbon intensities, from our zone config files (yaml files) into more easily used formats such as CSVs and build new parsers to get more dynamic data for capacities, exchange capacities and more.
These changes enable us to build the best electricity platform possible, enhance our current offerings and give you and all our other users the most accurate insights and data available.
But these are just the first steps, we have several exciting developments happening right now behind the scenes. So please reach out in this GitHub discussion if you would like to help shape the path of contrib going forward!
While we have removed the frontend components and are no longer accepting PRs to modify them, the existing code and translations are not lost. It remains available in the git history, for anyone who wishes to use it for their own visualization purposes.