Month: May 2016

Samples

Water Use in Qingdao, China

Interesting Sankey diagram on water use in Qingdao, China in 2011. This is from a presentation titled ‘Urban water security – Water-energy-food nexus’ by Josh Weinberg of Stockholm International Water Institute. Atkins and World Resources Institute (WRI) appear as co-authors.

qingdao_wateruse_2011

Unit of flow seems to be million m³ （百万立方米）. Water origin is mainly surface water (455 mio m³) and local ground water (367 mio m³), with some additional (146 mio m³) brought in from Yellow River and Yangtze River.

Not sure about the split shown with two green flows, possibly breaking down the water use to urban (city of Qingdao) and province.

The middle part shows consumers: Farming (?) is largest consumer with 311 mio m³ per year, followed by ??? with 230 mio m³, and use in industry with 153 mio m³. Polluted water is shown in black.

Maybe someone who reads Chinese wants to chime in…

Fakes

Lying with Sankey diagrams (5)

Haven’t posted much in this mini-series recently … not that there would be a lack of Sankey diagrams that have technical defects or simply misrepresent flow quantities with deliberate arrow widths.

In this Sankey diagram from a website by AEPC the blue arrow is grossly exaggerated and not to scale with the other flows.

energy_flow_not_to_scale

Flows are in KWh. Energy inputs (solar, fuel for boiler and pumps) on the left. Uses and losses to the right.

Samples

Sweden’s Energy Balance

Julien Morel of the Swedish Energy Agency (‘Energymyndigheten’) has pointed me to the newly released Swedish Energy Balance for 2014.

The publication (available here) has the English version of the diagram on page 4:

sweden_energy_system_2014

This one is interesting, as it is set up mirrored, to be read from right to left, in contrast to the common way of presenting national energy flows (e.g. here for Australia or here for Iran).

Overall consumption was 368 TWh in 2014. Sweden relies roughly one third on nuclear energy, one third on fossil fuels, and one third on renewables (wind, hydro and biofuels).

The different areas of the energy system are further detailed per consuming sector and per fuel type and shown with individual Sankey diagrams. So if you understand some Swedish, go check out the 17-page presentation.