Evolution of Residential Electricity Use in the US
Evolution of Residential Electricity Use in the US Heading link
For the 2014 holiday season, we compiled this holiday-themed data visualization. It shows the evolution of average residential electricity use per consumer and by State in the United States from 1994 to 2012. The green States have low residential electricity use in contrast with the red States. We can notably see that red States tend to be in the South since they need more electricity for space cooling during hot days (with the notable exception of California with its temperate climate all year long). Units are in Megawatt Hours (MWh) per year, and the values ranged from below 7 MWh to above 17 MWh, therefore showing quite a big gap! The data comes from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). For the visualization, we used the fantastic datamaps library that uses d3.
To make it easier to dig in the data a little, we compiled the visualization in three formats:
Animated map (the one you see below in a full page)
Side-by-side maps to see all years next to one another
Slider option map to easily switch between the year
(Note: this visualization does not work anymore since the website was migrated to a new system.)