California Solar Map
Thanks to all who have written comments and sent me notes over the past couple of days. Keep ‘em coming! I hope you can hang out and contribute here from time to time. These days, it’s South By Southwest Interactive here in Austin, so this post is short and sweet.
Data visualizations tell a story. When executed well, visualizations bring a level of clarity to an aspect of the world impossible otherwise. Here’s a very simple example, using a map.
Climate Progress recently posted about a Google Maps mashup that utilizes data from the California Energy Commission to show the rapid growth of solar energy (in particular, photovoltaic) in California over the last decade. It’s actually quite dramatic, and tells a hopeful story.
Climate Progress has some interesting points about the factors that made PV economic in California and New Jersey. (The states combined made up 80% of the market in PV in 2006. )
Mon 10 Mar 02008
Thanks Michael for your post regarding our solar heat map. Anything else solar related you want to see on a map? Let us know, we are up for suggestions!
Tue 18 Mar 02008
Hey Danny, thanks for stopping by!
I think that in the world of solar, bringing this kind of data into a nation-wide map would be phenomenal to see.
Another possiblity (related to my post on CARMA, yesterday) would be a map showing the relative proportion of solar energy generation by energy utilities, related to total energy generation. We could see it progress over time, and perhaps even show future projections.
I also like the map you did showing “Solar Power Rating”:
http://solar.coolerplanet.com/Content/SolarPowerRating.aspx
I have a suggestion, mainly because I can’t help myself - - but also in the spirit of making this kind of information more engaging and accessible: I think it would be cool if you leveraged the Google maps functionality that allows you to click for details. There’s a table of data under the map of the states, but I think the map would be more engaging if the data from the table were integrated into the map. You could even take it to another level and provide links in the details “speech bubbles” to resources about solar incentives in each state.