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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!
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
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
- · DATA.GOV - US Government open data – ties to over 250,000 databases https://www.data.gov/
- · American Fact Finder – guided search portal to US Census data bases https://factfinder.census.gov/
- · Data.World collaborative access to the open data community https://data.world/
- · Stat.Can is the national statistic office portal in Canada https://www.statcan.gc.ca/
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
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
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
Jim
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