Area chart | Generation capacity over the years for each power fuel type

Visual Design
#1

Hey guys,

I have created an area chart that conveys the increase of the generation capacity over the years and the proportion of each fuel type, and I would just have a couple of quick questions about it.

Data Description:

Image:

1600×873 172 KB

Visual Design Type: Area chart

Name of Tool: Tableu

Country: Global

Year: 1983- 2017

Visual Mappings: x axis represents the year, and y represents the total global yearly capacity_mw. Each colored area represents a different fuel.

Unique Observation: Coal still produces massively more energy overall than any other fuel type. What is also interesting is that nuclear power has dips in usage. Between 2002 and 2011 there was almost no energy produced by nuclear power, although it is one of the most effective ways to produce energy; also to note is that its usage has fallen dramatically after 1989. Also to note that from 2000 onwards, wind power plants produce more and more of the total energy.

Data Preparation: The null years have been filtered out, since they have the majority and would skew the graphic negatively. Also, the years have been formatted to represent a date (month and day has been defaulted to 1/1), since they were a string in it’s CSV format

Source : http://datasets.wri.org/dataset/globalpowerplantdatabase

Question :

Is there any way to increase the readability of fuel types that do not produce as much as other types? (e.g. nuclear)
Is the choice of the colour scheme appropriate?
Any better way to represent the data or to improve it?

#2

hey cy,

regarding your color palete it is correct. I really like how you differentiated the fuel types. Good job on that!

In order to increase the readability of fuel types you might want to look at working on a formula in python in order to remove the low level types. You can do that by analysing the plots first with something like matplot lib and then see which one you can remove.
I can see you are using Tableau. You can apply a formula on the parameter that has the types, so that you can be left with only the ones that produce a high number.