U.S. Electric Power Generation

Comparison of Power Generation in the U.S. by fuel source (coal, solar, nuclear)

Map created by Tom Scholten

This map displays data points of 6900 electrical generating power plants across the US obtained from the {EIA's form923] http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia923/. The data contain the total generating capacity of each plant, as well its fuel source(s), encoded as one or more of the following string values: "Hydro", "Coal", "Natural Gas", "Petroleum", "Nuclear", "Wind", "Pumped Storage", "Solar", "Geothermal", "Biomass", "Wood", "Other", or "Other Fossil Gasses."

The data also contain the capacity generated from up two sources if applicable (e.g., some power plants may use both coal and natural gas) and about 500 of the 6900 plants generate power from two primary sources. Note: the data for any plant includes no more than two fuel sources.

Key features of this map include:

Replacing simple point location markers with an SVG circle and using the Leaflet class “CircleMarker” to better visualize numerous point locations in very close proximity.
Shows power plant power generation using proportional symbol size to encode visually the amount of power produced from a particular fuel source.
Allows the user to compare easily 3 distinct fuel sources (of any amount of generating capacity) by visually encoding the proportional symbols with distinct colors (i.e., make the symbol for each fuel source a different color).
Provides the user with a layer control to toggle on and off the visibility of various power plant data layers.
Styles the label text within the layer control to correspond with the color used to encode a specific power fuel source.
When the user clicks on the map once, the map display will change to only show plants within 500 km of the click event.
After the user clicks on the map to filter by distance and then clicks on any power plant currently visible, a popup will show specific information about the plant. this information should include the plant's name, its fuel source, and the distance from the plant to the click point.