<story><title>Three-dimensional model of electricity consumption in Manchester (1954)</title><url>https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8418916/three-dimensional-model-of-electricity-consumption-in-manchester-chart-graphic-document</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gillesjacobs</author><text>The model description doesn&amp;#x27;t label axes. The biggest faux-pas in data visualization, so let&amp;#x27;s fix it:&lt;p&gt;X: Days between October 1951 to April 1954.&lt;p&gt;Y: City-wide electricity consumption (Megawatt-hours (?)) in increments of 5MWh.&lt;p&gt;Z: Half-hours in day.&lt;p&gt;Additional info on daily card:&lt;p&gt;- sunrise-sunset time.&lt;p&gt;- several fields for weather information.&lt;p&gt;- illumination.&lt;p&gt;- free form &amp;quot;notable events&amp;quot; annotated on card.&lt;p&gt;Unbelievable someone cut these cards by hand in half-hour, 5MWh increments. Together with keeping track of notable events related to electricity consumption, some administrator filled a full-time job generating this data.</text></comment>
<story><title>Three-dimensional model of electricity consumption in Manchester (1954)</title><url>https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8418916/three-dimensional-model-of-electricity-consumption-in-manchester-chart-graphic-document</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sleavey</author><text>Interesting to compare this to modern UK demand curves: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;assets.publishing.service.gov.uk&amp;#x2F;government&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;system&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;attachment_data&amp;#x2F;file&amp;#x2F;295225&amp;#x2F;Seasonal_variations_in_electricity_demand.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;assets.publishing.service.gov.uk&amp;#x2F;government&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;There seem to be dips in the middle of the day in the 1954 data (lunch breaks), and pronounced peaks and drops at the start and end of the working day, suggesting that the demand was strongly dominated by industrial use. UK demand curves today don&amp;#x27;t show this much - presumably because people still leave their office computers, servers, etc. on over lunch and overnight.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s also a smaller bump at 22h in the 1954 data and it&amp;#x27;s still somewhat present today in the summer data. I can&amp;#x27;t think of a good explanation for it. Perhaps street lighting, only visible as a second bump when they turn on only much later (summer) than the tapering off industrial demand? (An example of different demand types: those following fixed working hours and those following varying day&amp;#x2F;night light hours).</text></comment>