An Integrated Geovisual Analytics Framework for Analysis of Energy Consumption Data and Renewable Energy Potentials

We present an integrated geovisual analytics framework for utility consumers to interactively analyze and benchmark their energy consumption. The framework uses energy and property data already available with the utility companies and county governments respectively. The motivation for the developed framework is the need for citizens to go beyond the conventional utility bills in understanding the patterns in their energy consumption. There is also a need for citizens to go beyond one-time improvements that are often not monitored and measured over time. Some of the features of the framework include the ability for citizens to visualize their historical energy consumption data along with weather data in their location. The quantity of historical energy data available is significantly more than what is available from utility bills. An overlay of the weather data provides users with a visual correlation between weather patterns and their energy consumption patterns. Another feature of the framework is the ability for citizens to compare their consumption on an aggregated basis to that of their peers – other citizens living in houses of similar size and age – and within the same or different geographical boundaries, such as subdivision, zip code, or county. The users could also compare their consumption to others based on the size of their family and other attributes. This feature could help citizens determine if they are among the “best in class”. The framework can also be used by the utility companies to better understand their customers and to plan their services. To make the framework easily accessible, it is developed to be compatible with mobile consumer electronics devices.