Data Is Plural

Powering America. Every year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration requires thousands of power plants to report detailed data on fuel consumption and electricity generation. The datasets stretch back more than three decades, to 1989. In 2014, the most recent year available, Arizona’s Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station generated more electricity — 32 million megawatt hours — than any other power plant in the country. [h/t Marc DaCosta]

Nature-spotting. iNaturalist is a sort of social network for nature enthusiasts. Users can post photos and descriptions of birds, fish, bugs, and even mold, which experts can then help to identify. In November, the site recorded its two-millionth observation. You can explore the data via API or, with a free account, use the site’s export tool. [h/t Dan Brady]

Organ transplants. The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, a public-private partnership, keeps records of organ donations, transplants, and waiting lists in the United States. The website’s “advanced” data tool lets you generate fairly detailed custom reports. One hitch: The site doesn’t provide an option to download the data. Data Is Plural wrote a small bit of software to fix that.

More political ads. The Internet Archive’s Political TV Ad Archive uses audio fingerprinting to identify the campaign ads playing in key primary states. You can search the database, watch the ads, and download the data. The data file contains information about each ad’s sponsor, pro/con-ness, TV network, and time of airing. Previously: Political Ad Sleuth, featured Jan. 20.

One million songs. The Million Song Database contains metadata and “feature analysis” (e.g., loudness, tempo, and “danceability”) for, you guessed it, one thousand-thousand songs. The full dataset occupies hundreds of gigabytes, but you can also download a 1% sample. [h/t Neal Lathia]