Embedded Files
Introduction
Introduction
This project was made with the purpose to visualize different power power plants in the United States with the ability to compare using different methods.
Going to the application, you are brought to the first page of the website.
Here is just a simple map of Illinois with all the power plants in Illinois. You are able to pan and zoom around the map, look at the names of the plants by hovering over the points and filtering using the checkbox on the left side of the page. If you ever decide to go back to the initial view, the reset button under the zoom buttons will take you back. This reset button will be on all the maps ahead.
The next page is the Map Compare page.
You will see that the page is basically split into two regions: the left side and the right side. The default view is Illinois for the year 2000 and the right side is Illinois for the year 2018. There are several functions that this page has. For each region, you can change the year you are viewing at the top of the box and the state that you want to see on each far side. There are also checkboxes on each far side that will filter out sources for each region. If you want to filter out sources for both regions at the same time, the checkbox at the bottom of the page will change the checkboxes at the same time. To change the map type, hover over the layer box on the top right of the map and select different map types.
One thing to notice about this page is that the dots on the map vary in size. The dots on the map change size depending on their generation capacity. This means that plants producing a significant amount of energy will have bigger dot than a plant that produces very minimal amounts of energy. Another feature about the dots on the map are that they have popups when you click on them. Clicking on the dot will not only display the name, but also the percent of renewable energy at the plant, the percent of non-renewable energy, and the generation capacity of the map.
The final page is the US View page.
The main focus of this page is to show the plants of the United States. There is a checkbox on the left that work like all the others, the ability to choose between different years, as well as--and most importantly--a range slider on the bottom of the page.
The slider is the most important feature on this page. This slider allows the user to find power plants producing <=n MWh, power plants producing >=n MWh, as well as any subset between the min and the max.
Data
Data
Data Origin
Data Origin
All data comes from the EPA website. This project uses the eGRID2018v2 Data File (XLSX) from the PLNT18 tab as well as eGRID historical files (1996-2016), specifically for the years 2000 and 2010. These files also use the PLNT tab.
Data Info
Data Info
The data extracted has columns containing state, plant name, plant latitude, plant longitude, coal generation, oil generation, gas generation, nuclear generation, hydro generation, biomass generation, wind generation, solar generation, geothermal generation, and two columns with other generation
Data Cleaning
Data Cleaning
The data goes through some cleaning before being put to use. Before being put into RStudio, the data for the year had to be changed slightly. The latitude column had positive values, when they should've been negative, so I made those values negative.
Putting the data into RStudio, I made sure to make any columns with numbers in it into a numeric type.
Next I made a new OTHER column that combines the two other columns from the original data.
In order to identify what a plant's main energy source was, I went through each row and decided what each plant produced the most of. Then I summed all the energy columns to make a new column with a total generation. From this total generation column, I was able to show what percentage of each energy source the plant was (including renewable and non-renewable), as well as total generation of renewable and non-renewable.
Running the Program
Running the Program
Dowload the source code from Github
Download and install R from here
Make sure the version is 3.0.1 or newer, preferably the most recent version
Download and install RStudio Desktop
Once RStudio is installed, we need to install some packages. In the console, type and press enter on the following
install.packages("shiny")
install.packages("shinydashboard")
install.packages("ggplot2")
install.packages("leaflet")
Once the libraries are installed, you can run the application by pressing "Run App" on the upper right corner of the text window. A window will open and your application will be running locally!
Interesting Finds
Interesting Finds
A lot of the finds I came across had to do with solar energy. From the year 2000 to 2018. There seems to be a huge explosion of solar energy in the United States with plants opening left and right. In the year 2000, Illinois didn't seem to have many solar plants (at least with a positive net generation). The only plants with positive generation were located in California, which is a state with a lot of sun. Going through each of the years, you can start to see how much the United States is starting to transition to renewable energy.
On the topic of renewable energy, the leading source in the united states seems to change as well. In the year 2000, hydro seems to be the largest source of renewable energy. Looking at 2010, you can start to see that other sources start grow while hydro stays about the same. In 2018, you can see that solar and wind energy absolutely explodes. My guess for the reason behind this is that solar and wind technologies have quickly increased in efficiency so that these sources are now a more viable option over others.
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