This data is downloaded from : http://datasets.wri.org/dataset/globalpowerplantdatabase.

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It is an attempt to analyse power plants around the world , to understand the demand and supply of power by country . Also its an attempt to see how many countries are having a hybrid model of power generation where in there is a mix of renewable and non-renewable resources.

The data consists of 28K odd records of power plant distribution in 164 countries along wih their latitude and longitude location.

Each plant’s capacity is in MW , type of fuel used in the generation is also mentioned .There are four fuel type columns but only fuel1 values are provided for all the rows.

There are 12 different fuel types ranging from non-renewable types such as coal , gas as well as renewables such as hydro , wind, solar etc .

Commissioning year and year_of_capacity data are not completely provided(50%). Hence we may not be able to do analysis based on those dates.

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Descriptive Analysis :

Questions to be asked:

1. Which fuel type has the largest power generation capacity ?

2. Country wise largest power generation capacity and by fuel type ?

3. Country wise percentage of power generation by renewables to non renewables ? Which ####are the leading and lagging countries in the use of renewables ?

4. How do the number of plants vary for every fuel type ?

5. How do the estimation of power generation vary with the actual capacity ?

Fuel types of the power plants

Renewable fuel types have less than 50% capacity compared to the non-renewable fuels world wide .

Coal and Gas have the highest power generation capacity , followed by hydro .

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Its observed that US and China have a great lead in terms of total capacity of power generation, which is more than 3 times the capacity for India and Japan.

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The plot shows that China and USA have the maximum power generation capaicity with coal , followed by India.

China has great margin , more than 2 times of USA . Brazil , Canada have maximum power generation with hydro .

Russia and Japan have gas power plants generating maximum power and Saudi Arabia has maximum power generation with oil .

France has maximum power generation by nuclear power plants.

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Visualizing the maximum power generation capaicity for each fuel type and the respective country generating it.

Maximum power generation with coal and hydro is done in China . Maximum power generation with Gas , Oil , Wind , Geothermal , Solar is done in USA . Biomass based power generation is done at the maximum in Brazil . Great Britain , Korea and Denmark have Cogeneration ,Wave and Tidal and Other as the fuel type , however the power generation capaicity is minisculed by the other fuel types.

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Shows that renewable energy such as hydro , solar and wind have the highest number of installations.

This is due to dependency of the installations on the geographical locations and the smaller size of the plant as compared to the coal , oil and gas power plants.

This highlights the dependency of world power generation on rainfall as we have many hydro power generating plants.

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We need more and more renewable energy used in power generation .

Lets look at the percentage of renewable being used by the top 20 countries .

Countries like Brazil , Canada, Great Britain are leaders in adoption of renewables in their power generation .

The goal would be to increase the percentage of renewables by all the countries, especally the countries that generate and consume more power.

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How do the estimation of power vary with the acual power generation capacity ??

Actual power generation capacity seems to be in line with the estimated power.

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Visualizing the locations of the power plants that have maximum capacity for the individual fuels.

Coal - China

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Hydro power - China

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Oil based power - USA

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Gas based power - USA

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Wind based power - USA

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Solar based power - USA

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Biomass based power - Brazil

Summary

It is seen that USA and China have a major lead in power generation over rest of the countries. The major fuel used is coal , gas , hydro and oil

Hydro is the renewable energy fuel type which is used in power generation in many countries and with China leading in it . This highlights the major dependeny on water cycle for power generation world wide.

The percentage of renewables used in power generation yet remains less with maximum of 30% in China and 20% in USA . There needs to be a major focus to increase this percentage so as to have less dependency on the depleting fuels