Added Power Plant Capacity in the United States

Data Source

Power plant data can be downloaded from World Resources Institute website (1). Original dataset was preprocessed to extract data relevant to United States and power plants generating electricity from coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, oil, solar and wind sources.

How to Use the Chart

Added capacity in megawatts of power is plotted against year of plant commissioning. The chart is interactive, which allows selecting energy source categories of interest. User can zoom in on particular area of the chart related to specific time period. Some interesting trends in added capacity of power plants over the years can be observed with respect to the source of energy. Following R code can be used to reproduce the charts below.

library(knitr)
library(plotly)
powerplants <- unzip("globalpowerplantdatabasev110.zip", exdir=getwd())
pp <- read.csv(list.files()[1])
ppa <- pp[, c(1,2,3,5,8,12)]
ppU <- ppa[grep("USA", ppa$country),]
ppU1 <- aggregate(capacity_mw~commissioning_year+fuel1, data=ppU, sum)
ppu2 <- ppU1[grep("Coal|Gas|Hydro|Nuclear|Oil|Solar|Wind", ppU1$fuel1),]
plot_ly(ppu2, x=~round(commissioning_year), y=~capacity_mw, color=~fuel1, type="bar") %>%
  layout(title="Added Power Generation Capacity", xaxis=list(title="Year"), yaxis=list(title="Added Power Generation Capacity (MW)"))

ppu4 <- aggregate(capacity_mw~fuel1, data=ppU1, sum)
ppu4 <- data.frame(ppu4, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
ppu4$fuel1 <- factor(ppu4$fuel1, levels=unique(ppu4$fuel1)[order(ppu4$capacity_mw, decreasing=TRUE)])
plot_ly(ppu4, x=~fuel1, y=~capacity_mw, type="bar")%>%
  layout(title="Total Added Power Generation Capacity", xaxis=list(title="Source of Energy"), yaxis=list(title="Added Power Generation Capacity (MW)"))

Conclusions

1. Interestingly, most of power generation capacity before 1940s was related to hydropower. However, new coal power plants had been brought online in 50s, 60s, and 70s. Addition of new hydropower generation peaked in late 60s with coal projects peaking the following decade - in late 70s. Addition of new nuclear power plants reached its peak in the end of 80s. Finally, new gas and oil power plants were built at rapid pace at the turn of the century, peaking in 2002-2003. Last decade (late 2000s) saw explosive growth in the power generating capacity from solar and wind energy. However, there is notable slow down after 2015-2016 in new solar and wind projects brought online. All these features can be clearly seen by deselecting all categories, and then looking at each energy source category one by one at the 1st chart above.
2. Nevertheless, as can be concluded from 2nd chart, most power generating capacity has been added for coal power plants throughout the years when comparing to other categories.

Reference

1. Global Energy Observatory, Google, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Enipedia, World Resources Institute. 2018. Global Power Plant Database. Published on Resource Watch and Google Earth Engine; http://resourcewatch.org/ https://earthengine.google.com/