(Search) icon in the title bar.This Atlas Of World Power Plants is an interactive map and database of all Power Plants with a capacity (maximum energy output) of 1 Megawatt (MW) or greater, located throughout the entire world. There are approximately 30,000 Power Plants in the database, so it is important to specify a query search that returns a manageable amount of data, in terms of time to retrieve from the database, format, and render on the screen. You can select Power Plants for display by fuel source, plant capacity, and geographic region.
To activate a query, click the (Search) icon in the title bar.
Under Power Plant Fuel Source, pick one or more fuel sources (the colors indicate the colors that are used in the Power Plant list, as described below). Choices include:
Under Power Plant Capacity (MW) select one or more capacity categories. Power Plant capacities are grouped into ranges:
In the Geographic Region section, choose either a predefined or a custom geographic region. The globe on the left side is a toggle to switch between the two choices, with the default set as Predefined. Predefined geographic regions include:
To define a Custom geographic region, click the globe once to display the Geographic Selector (GS) rectangle. The GS rectangle can be moved by placing your cursor inside the rectangle and dragging it, and can be resized by clicking on any of the four resizing squares in each corner of the GS, and dragging the corner in any direction. The North, East, South, and West boundaries of the region are displayed in the coordinate display area. Use the map zoom feature if necessary to refine the area as desired.
To run the query, click the right-pointing arrow at the bottom of the menu. The Power Plants app retrieves a count of the number of plants that meet the search criteria. If this number is greater than 1000, an alert is issued that allows you to refine any of the query parameters to retrieve a more manageable number.
The query results are returned and presented in three separate areas in the app:
Power Plants Table
The Power Plants Table in the upper left quadrant displays the number of occurrences of each category of Power Plant, by Fuel Source (row) and Capacity (column). The table is interactive, allowing you to isolate specific power plant categories by clicking the appropriate table cell. When the table is initially presented, all cells that have non-zero quantities are colored green, and markers corresponding to every plant are displayed on the map. If you click on a green cell, it turns red and the power plant markers for that category are removed from the map. Clicking a cell colored red restores all markers in the category, and the cell is colored green again. Each row and column header works in a similar fashion - clicking a green row header (for example, the row labeled "Nuclear") removes ALL power plants with a nuclear fuel source from the map display, and turns the Nuclear row header red.
Power Plants List
The Power Plants List in the lower left quadrant lists each Power Plant that satisfies the search criteria, showing the plant name, country, fuel type, and plant capacity. The fuel type is colored to match the icon display color on the map, as indicated in the Queries section, above. The list can be sorted by clicking the appropriate column header. Click on a plant name to locate the plant marker on the map and display a popup that contains additional details on the plant. Conversely, clicking on a marker displays the popup, and highlights it in the Power Plants List.
Map Display
Each Power Plant is represented by a marker showing its geographic location on the map. The map can be zoomed to a high level of resolution, showing detail around the plant including access roads, adjacent facilities, etc. Click a marker to display a popup that shows details about the plant. (Note that due to map scale and marker size, power plant markers may not be correctly positioned on the map at low zoom resolution; marker locations become more accurate as zoom level increases)
This section provides some detail on the implementation of the Atlas.
Power Plant data source description and citation (below map area):
Technical Details:
I am greatly indebted to the following technologies, all of which are free for use via standard GNU licensing or similar access rights:
This app is a work in progress.
I welcome comments, (constructive) criticism, suggestions, and improvements; please refer to the Contact information in the Footer display at the bottom of the Web page.
