The Explorer has been part of Sourceful since early on. It started as a way to see where gateways were going live around the world. But as the network grew, the original version couldn't keep up. We needed something that could show not just where gateways are, but what they're actually doing.
So we rebuilt it from scratch. The new Sourceful Explorer is now live at its own home, explorer.sourceful.energy. It's faster, deeper, and does a lot more than show dots on a map.
The globe
The centrepiece is an interactive 3D globe. Landmasses are rendered as particle systems, thousands of tiny dots forming continents you can rotate, zoom, and fly through. Satellites orbit at realistic altitudes. Shooting stars streak across the background. Most of it is atmospheric, but the green elements are real data. Every glowing point represents an actual node in the network.
Zap gateways are plotted as points on the globe, showing where the network is active.
Click a country to zoom in. A panel slides in showing gateway and DER counts, aggregate power output, lifetime energy generated, and the live spot electricity price with upcoming highs and lows. Countries with no gateways yet show a call-to-action to be the first to deploy there.
A stats bar shows total gateways worldwide, countries covered, and DERs currently online, all updated in real-time. Press / to search for any country or gateway by name, wallet address, or ID.
The soundscape
This is probably the most unusual part: the Explorer has location-aware ambient audio. Zoom into Sweden and you hear frozen lake ambience. Brazil gets the Amazon rainforest. Japan gets Kyoto temple bells. There are 18 country-specific tracks, all Creative Commons licensed, that crossfade as you navigate.
You can mute it, and it's off by default on mobile. But on desktop it makes the Explorer something you actually want to spend time in.
Try it without hardware
You don't need a Zap to explore the network. We also wanted people to experience the full owner view without any hardware at all.
New visitors get a prompt to explore a demo site or take a guided tour. The guided tour is a 9-step walkthrough introducing "Solarville Home" in Kalmar, Sweden, a simulated household with solar panels, a battery, a grid meter, and an EV charger connected to a VW ID. Buzz. Each step covers a different feature: live telemetry, power flows, battery scheduling, energy history, EV charging.
You can also jump into demo mode from the ? help menu. The demo generates realistic, time-varying telemetry so it always feels alive regardless of when you visit.
What Zap owners see
After logging in with Privy (wallet or email), the Explorer becomes a full energy management interface.
Your network panel shows your wallet address, reward points (with yesterday's and 7-day breakdowns), all your sites, connected DERs per site, and any EVs on the network.
Click a site to open the site detail panel. It updates every five seconds:
- Solar production in kW, with today's total
- Battery power and state of charge, shown as an ASCII-style gauge
- Grid import/export with arrows showing energy direction
- Home consumption in kW
- EV charger status: charging, discharging, sleeping, or disconnected
Below that: today's summary with solar generation, load, grid import/export, costs, revenue, net cost, and effective rate. All with percentage changes versus yesterday.
There's also three-phase current balance (L1/L2/L3) and AI-generated insights on self-use percentage, weekly trends, and performance.
Watching energy flow
The animated power flow diagram shows energy moving between solar, grid, battery, home, and EV in real-time. Dots travel along the paths showing direction and magnitude. Green for generation, orange for consumption.
You can watch solar flow into your battery, then out to your EV. When the battery kicks in during a price spike, you see it happen. It's the kind of feedback that numbers alone can't give you.
Battery scheduling and history
The EMS schedule shows a 24-hour timeline of your battery's optimisation schedule. Colour-coded: self-use (green), charge (orange), export (blue), peak shaving (yellow), idle (dimmed). Hover for details, toggle peak shaving on/off.
Site history has three views:
- Energy: daily import vs export bars over 7/30/90 days
- Grid exchange: intraday area charts at 15-min or 1-hour resolution, with a yesterday overlay. Navigate day by day.
- Peak demand: monthly peak consumption bars, with the top 3 peaks highlighted. Useful because many grid companies bill based on your highest demand moments.
EV owners
A dedicated vehicle panel shows charging status, power draw, battery level with target, charger mode (smart/manual), max charge power, and next scheduled charge. V2X users see bidirectional flow in the power diagram.
Context-aware assistant
Every panel has a chat assistant that knows what you're looking at. It's aware of your selected site, current telemetry, electricity prices, and battery schedule. Ask "why is my battery charging right now?" and you get an answer based on your actual data.
Terminal aesthetic
The Explorer doesn't look like a typical energy interface. That's on purpose. Dark mode only. Monospace type. Green on black. ASCII art elements. Blinking cursors.
We wanted it to feel like a control terminal for the decentralised grid, not a consumer app. Panels are draggable on desktop, full-screen modals on mobile.
Built for the web
No install, no app store. It runs in any modern browser. Built with React Three Fiber, server-sent events for real-time data, and Privy for auth.
Open it
The Explorer is live at explorer.sourceful.energy. Spin the globe. Click a country. Check the electricity price. Take the tour. Turn on the sound.
If you have a Zap, log in and see your network. If you don't, the demo shows you what you're missing. Get a Zap to join.
