Calton Works helps organisations understand, improve and open up their data — particularly in energy, infrastructure and work with wider public value.
The practice
A founder-led consultancy for people doing substantive work with data. We favour open standards, reproducible methods and open-source software where they make the result more useful — while working comfortably on confidential commercial engagements too.
Areas of work
01
Make data easier to find, trust and use. Publish it well, document it clearly, and build tools and methods that others can learn from.
02
Turn complex operational and system data into practical understanding across renewables, heat, flexibility, networks and infrastructure.
03
Investigate difficult questions, improve the underlying data, and produce analysis that supports a decision rather than obscuring it.
The form follows the problem: a focused investigation, analytical model, documented dataset, working prototype or longer piece of technical delivery.
Working principles
Share data, code and methods when doing so makes the work more useful.
Make the reasoning visible and the limits clear.
Leave behind work that can be understood, checked and extended.
Prefer a clear answer and a maintainable tool to consultancy theatre.
Work directly with the person doing the analysis and building the solution.
Selected projects
Calton Works
An open tool for exploring long-term generation estimates for operational GB wind farms. Compare sites on a map, inspect generation and wind-resource histories, and adjust assumptions to understand how model-based estimates change. Results are provisional and intended for benchmarking, screening and research.
Ambition Community Energy
Built a data platform and public dashboard for ACE’s community-owned 4.2 MW wind turbine in Lawrence Weston, Bristol. Explore generation, wind conditions and operating signals, with open data and API access for learning, research and new community tools.
WeDoWind
Lead WeDoWind’s Open Data Exploration space, bringing researchers and practitioners together around real wind-farm data. Collaborative challenges explore energy yield, yaw alignment and public communication, sharing methods and findings so others can learn and build on them.
Commercial engagements
Calton Works undertakes paid analysis and technical advisory work for organisations that need experienced support with data, energy or infrastructure. Projects are scoped around clear questions, useful outputs and a defined point of completion.
Founder-led
Calton Works is led by Charlie Plumley, a Chartered Engineer with more than 15 years' experience solving operational and analytical problems in complex engineering environments.
Charlie's background spans renewable energy assets, control systems, software and infrastructure investment. He holds a PhD in Wind Energy Systems and works hands-on from the first technical question through to analysis, software and delivery.
Calton · Glasgow · Scotland
Inspired by Calton's history of weaving and making, we bring the same care to our work: connecting ideas and making useful things.
Start a conversation
Whether you are opening a dataset, building something useful, or need experienced independent analysis, it is worth a conversation.
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