Trends in the Number and Distribution of Power Plants in China (1980--2018)

Visual Design
#1

Hi everyone,

I have designed a visualisation with data from Global Power Plant Database and I would like to share it with you.

Image:

China_PowerPlant_Number & Distribution
China_PowerPlant_Number & Distribution1600×850 77.6 KB

Discription:

Visual Design Type : density map + bar chart

Name of Tool : Tableau

Country : China

Year : 1980–2018

Visual Mappings :

Columns: Commissioning year from 1980 to 2018

Rows: The number of power plants, primary fuel

Color : Different types of fuel

Dotted Constant Line: By 1993, China stopped employing oil and geothermal energy.

Trendline: Trends in the number of power plants from 1980 to 2018 in China.

Height of balls: The number of power plants. The ball representing 2006 is the highest which means the number of power plants in China peaked in 2006.

Unique Observation : We can conclude that China had a growing number of power plants until 2006 when the increase peaked, after 2006, the number of power plants has fallen sharply. Moreover, by 2018, China has always been using coal energy.

Data Preparation : Data is only from the filtered country. Moreover, we choose the commissioning year only from 1980 to 2018.

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

My Question:

• How can my visual design be improved?

• Are there any other types of visual layouts that would be better for this challenge?

I would appreciate it if you could give me some suggeations.

Thanks!

#2

I think this is a great visualization of trends in the number of power plants in China from 1980 to 2018. It graphically demonstrates that the number of power plants in China increased first and then decreased.
Moreover, I have some suggestions for your questions:
· The trend line could be more accurate to better reflect changes in the number of power plants in China
· Maybe you could replace the bar chart with a pie chart or a radar chart to make the fuel comparisons more obvious.
In a word, I like the manifestation of this design which shows both trends and proportion.