Distribution and power generation of power plants around France

#1

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Visual Design Type : Symbol Map
Name of Tool: Tableau
Country: France
Year: 2014
Visual Mappings:
Colour: primary_fuel
Filter: country_long: France
Size: SUM(estimated_generation_gwh)
Detail: name
X Axis: AVG(longitude)
Y Axis: AVG(latitude)
Unique Observation: From this visualisation you can see how much of the country’s power generation comes from nuclear power plants. Another observation is that the majority of the solar generation occurs in the south and most of the wind generation occurs in the north of the country. Lastly, you can see how the main source of power comes from non-renewable power sources.
Data Preparation: The country_long field was filtered to only look at data in ‘France’. Additionally, I created two sets, one for renewable sources of energy and one for non-renewable sources.
Source : http://datasets.wri.org/dataset/globalpowerplantdatabase

Questions: Is it easy to see that most of France’s power generation comes from nuclear energy? Is the colour map chosen useful in identifying the fuel type used?

Thank you.

#2

Hi @joepacker99,

Those are some interesting observations you’ve made from the visualisation! Now to answer your questions…

Firstly, yes, the larger green circles plotted on the map combined with the bubble diagram underneath make it clear that most of France’s energy generation comes from nuclear.

Secondly, the colours chosen are mostly representative of the fuel type and therefore quite intuitive (e.g. grey for coal and yellow for solar). Perhaps a blue or grey would have been more appropriate for wind than orange, but I understand that those colours have been used elsewhere and reusing them may cause more confusion. Maybe consider using white?

Hope this helps :slight_smile:

Ben