Saturday, November 30, 2019

More than dots on a map - The renewable energy story

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Renewable Energy – How big is it-


A dashboard should tell a story beyond just presenting data.  It needs to be interesting and when possible encourage the viewer to interact and investigate to make the story their own. This is the end product


But that's several iterations later -

It  started like this - as a result of a trip from Nashville to Chicago. In northern Indiana there was a 10 mile stretch  where as far as I could see to the east or the west all I saw were wind turbines. Wow – didn’t expect to see that – thought that wind power was just a west coast thing.  

I found a data set that includes the location of every wind turbine in the US -  They were concentrated in the mid-west and south  Not what I expected at all - I had a lot to learn!










While interesting there wasn't much of have a story from that data  – just raised a lot of questions – How much energy do wind turbines produce? Is it a significant portion of overall energy production? What about other renewable sources? How does it vary by state?







What would you do - something like this might work but how would you make that



To start you need data. Lots of data! – Energy generated in Kwh , by generation source at the state level – you could use a search engine and hope for the best – there are also several portals that you could consider

The energy data used in here was found at www.eia.gov the US Energy Information Agency site but each energy source had to be extracted separately – (the a future post will go through the Tableau Prep flow used to combine and clean the separate energy source files). (Note: data is for electric energy generation in 2017) 


But what's the story? – Does energy generated from renewable source really represent 10% of the total?  That’s what I thought before looking at the data but that’s just not right – nationally it is closer to 15% and it some states renewable energy sources can account to 85% of the total. 


  • the portion of energy generated from each of the renewable source in each state
  • the state rank nationally 
  • and the trend since the start of the century

That would be a much more interesting story that just the location of  wind turbines that got my initial interest.   It would also be good if the dashboard was dynamic so individual users could look at their state or region.

The upper portion of the viz is where you can create the  most impact – Make the title a statement that takes the user away from any preconceived notions and use BAN blocks present both present the facts and set the color code for the rest of the viz




The block color – teal for Hydro, Gold for Solar, Red for Wind and Black to total all sources will be used throughout the remaining charts

Now build on the story including a Trend chart to show growth since the start of the century and  a state level ranking chart to see a comparison throughout the area.  They are relatively straight forward area and bar charts using the percent of total calculation




Finally, allow the user to select a state or area and change all the charts accordingly –
That’s the fun part and you may have noticed references to sets in the previous charts -




Sets and set actions driven off a state map make the dashboard dynamic. 
To create the State set, Open the STATE pill and Select CREATE then SET


When the box opens Select any STATE – we are going to change it with a set action, so the initial value is not important



Next create a simple Map at the State level
Drag State to the canvas to create the map and be sure to place the State Set on the marks card




Bring it all together on a dashboard using containers to fix the location of the individual sheets



Make your point in the title and always include attributions for data sources, functions or material that are not your own.  Also, if you want the user to do something you need to tell them what to do and why

One last thing – need to make the dashboard dynamic by adding a set action
And then set the action to go from the map on the selection form the viz






on the individual worksheets set action filter has been added



The filter is set as IN meaning that the States selected from the Map will be applied as the filter – you can select a single state, or several using a Cntl Select or use the lasso to select a area
  
Congratulations – you’re done!





Download the actual workbook, complete with  “How To” instructions, from my Tableau Public site at https://public.tableau.com/profile/jim.dehner#!/vizhome/RenewableEnergySources/Dashboard1 


Jim

Friday, November 29, 2019

Beyond getting started and want to up your viz game? -


Is this blog for you?

The post here assume you are familiar with writing calculations, creating text tables, and using data in bar and line charts.  You have used Tableau to replicate spreadsheet reports, done some mapping and have created time series dependent line and bar charts.  Most of all you want to take you data visualization game up a notch.
Like many of you I started using Tableau with a background in spreadsheet calculators but really didn’t understand data base driven systems like Tableau.  The transition was anything but smooth. Writing cell-based formulas and copying them down a column came easy, but the concept of dimensions and measures escaped me. Don’t even think abut LOD’s and table calculations.  It took some work, but I became comfortable with the different language and data structure – I call that the “Getting Started” phase.  If you are through Getting Started and ready to use Tableau to tell stories with your viz, use advanced calculations to get deeper into the data or just want to better understand why Tableau does that – then this blog is for you.
No claim is made that the solutions here are the most elegant or unique approach to the problem  – Many would be described as “brute force”, I come from an engineering and marketing background and it is reflected in the approach. 
Finally, I hope to help you get a better understanding of how Tableau works and why the data structure and order of your calculations are so important in getting the results you expect.
I also keep a number of solutions to FAQ’s from the Tableau Community Forum on my Tableau Public site at https://public.tableau.com/profile/jim.dehner#!/  Many include step-by-step how to instructions. I encourage you to check them out and download anything of interest.  That’s why they were created. 

Jim

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