Project 2

Raw Power

Visualization: https://bbaez2.shinyapps.io/bbaez2Project2/

Github: https://github.com/bbaez2/cs424-bbaez2Project2/

PRESENTATION OF the APPLICATION

Introduction to the Application

Figure 1: "Illinois Power Plants" tab showing the locations of the state's power plants

Although I did not get to have a complete application, I managed to get some implementation completed. The application has three tabs: “Illinois Power Plants,” “State Power Plants,” and “U.S. Power Plants.” The application initially starts on the “Illinois Power Plants” tab, where we see a map on the left side of the state of Illinois with its power plants identified from 2018. On the right side, there are checkboxes that a user would have to click in order to filter the map based on what they wanted to see. However, I had difficulty finding out how to implement this so this feature does nothing to the map. All the markers in the map are the same since I also could not figure out how to show different colors based on the type. Hovering over a marker will display the plant’s main type of energy source, and clicking a marker will display the name of the plant. There are zoom in/out buttons on the map, as well as a reset button.

Figure 2: "State Power Plants" tab showing the locations of the Illinois' power plants in 2000 and 2010

The “State Power Plants” tab will show two maps: the map on the left shows all the power plants in Illinois from 2000 and the map on the right shows all the power plants in Illinois from 2010. Just as with the previous tab’s map, these have a zoom in/out button and a reset button. These maps also show the main type of energy source when hovering over the marker and the plant’s name is shown when clicked.

Figure 3: "U.S. Power Plants" tab showing the locations of the U.S' power plants in 2000

The “U.S. Power Plants” tab will show a sample of 500 power plants since showing all of them would be too difficult for the application to handle (from what I experienced). There are tabs above the map that a user can use to change between the years 2000, 2010, and 2018, with 2000 being the default. This map also has zoom in/out and reset buttons. Hovering a marker shows the main type of energy source and clicking a marker will show the plant name.

The “About” page gives credit to the dataset.

EPA DATASETS

The datasets used for this application were acquired from https://www.epa.gov/egrid/download-data, specifically the files called eGRID2018v2_Data_File (XLSX) and the zip file called eGRID historical files (1996-2016), of which only the ones called eGRID2000_plant.xls and eGRID2010_Data.xls were used.

For the 2000, 2010, and 2018 files, the only data used was from the tabs called “EGRDPLNT00,” “PLNT10,” and “PLNT18,” respectively. In these tabs, the only columns I was interested in were the state abbreviations, plant name, main energy type for that plant, latitude, longitude, and the 10 (or 11 for both the 2010 and 2018 files) columns providing the energy generation (MWh) for the sources (coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, and other).

All columns were renamed to be easier to read/find. If the subsets had two “Other” columns, I added them into one column. I removed any rows with values that were “NA,” as well as any rows with energy generations that were negative. All the source values were made numeric, as well as the latitude and longitude values. For the energy types, I had to rename some since they all had different names. I determined what to rename them based on what energy type had the largest value. For the 2000 data, this was extremely tedious because I had to rename 38 types. All plant names were made uppercase. After all the cleanup that was done, I finally was able to continue with adding columns I would need for the application. A “TOTAL” column was created by adding all energy source values from “COAL” to “OTHER”. If any total energy values were negative, they were removed as they would interfere with the percentages. To calculate the percentage of each energy source, I divided each source by the total and multiplying by 100, making 10 new columns. To get the total energy generation of renewable sources, I added the energy values from “HYDRO,” “BIO,” “WIND,” “SOLAR,” and “GEO” into one new column. For the total energy generation of non-renewable sources I made a new column by simply subtracting the renewable energy values from the total energy values and put in a new column. To get the percentage of renewable and non-renewable energy, they were divided by the total energy generation and multiplied by 100, and put into new columns.

Observations from the Data

An interesting point I came across when looking at the 2018 map in my application was the number of power plants near where I live. There are three power plants in what may be a 10 mile radius, two of which are gas and one which is biomass. I did not actually know they were that close.

Around UIC, I was able to identify the gas power plant that is on Roosevelt and Morgan. I would sometimes walk by this power plant and always wondered what type of energy it was. I also noticed the oil power plant on Cermak, which I would sometimes drive by on the way to a grocery store with my roommates.

Outside of the suburbs in rural Illinois, I notice two interesting points. The first being that anything south of Springfield, IL is mostly either coal or gas. I would have actually imagined there to be more wind power plants, which brings me to my second point. Most wind farms are located north of Springfield and West of the suburbs.

From the sample of 500 in the “U.S. Power Plants”, I see that Texas has quite a number of wind farms, more than I expected since they are pretty big on their oil production. I also notice a big number of California’s power plants are solar. I see almost no coal power plants in that state and I am curious to know why that is. In Washington, the power plants that are displayed are either only hydro or biomass. This is also the case in Oregon as well.

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