Power Generation in China

Visual Design
#1

Hi everyone,

Hope you are having a good day. I am another Swansea University student trying to create a map which shows all the power plants in China based on their primary fuels. There are two images, both having the same visualisation, just different in colours. Each colour in the map defines different primary fuels. The size of the circles denote the energy generated by each power plant (i.e. the larger the circle, the more energy produced).

Image:

Picture1
Picture1940×406 116 KB
Picture4
Picture4940×398 197 KB

Visual Design Type: Symbol Maps

Name of Tool: Tableau

Country: China

Year: 2014

Visual Mappings:
X Axis: Latitude
Y Axis: Longitude
Colour: Primary Fuel Type
Shape: Circle
Size: Estimated Annual Electricity Generation in Gigawatt-Hours for the Year 2014

Unique Observation: From the symbol map above, we can see that the East part of China has more power plants than the West part of China. We can also see that most of the primary fuel types are coal and hydro. The largest electricity generation power plant is hydro.

Data Preparation: The dataset is filtered so that it does not include any null values. It is then filtered out all countries except China.

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

Questions:

  • Does the visual design make sense?
  • Is the choice of colour appropriate?
  • Is there any suggestions that I can further improve on my data visualisation?

Thank you for reading and your suggestions are much appreciated! :smiley:

#2

Hi, visualisation is good for one map. I would most likely use a different visualisation as a second image, such as a table or bar graph with the amount of power stations per type or generated output per fuel type.

#3

Hi,
The visualisation is nice and easy to understand at first glance.

I prefer the lighter colours however coal and hydro seem to populate most of the map but they both have similar shade of blue. Maybe its best to change the colours of these two.

Also, you could just show China rather than including the rest of the world and have the same information being shown. Maye even show the different provinces of China as well.

#4

Hi, the visualization overall does make sense. Compared to choropleth maps, the proportional symbol map that you used are much better for showing the power plants of different locations across China and sizing the energy generated respectively by radius. Regarding the colours, using a brighter colour for coal would be better to show the high volume of coal power plants in China compared to a dimmer colour (which will easily blend into the black background). Some opportunities for enhancement would be to show the China provinces on the map and that would be more insightful. Overall, it is a great work and is easy to grasp with appropriate data representation.