docs: Revamp Plotting & Summary Visualization Documentation
#1,751 opened on Mar 11, 2026
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Description
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Summary
The previous Plotting documentation section was removed during the MkDocs migration (PR #1638) as it was not particularly meaningful in its current state — it mainly contained an outdated color palette image with limited practical guidance.
However, plotting and result visualization are an important part of the PyPSA-Earth workflow and deserve proper documentation.
Scope
Create a new, comprehensive Plotting & Visualization documentation page that covers:
- Summary scripts — Document how
make_summary.pyandplot_summary.pywork and what outputs they produce - Result visualization — How to visualize network results (generation mix, line loading, etc.)
- Color palettes — Technology color schemes used in PyPSA-Earth plots (kept up-to-date with the actual config)
- Jupyter notebook examples — Link to or embed example plotting notebooks
- Custom plotting — Tips for users who want to create their own visualizations from PyPSA outputs
Context
- Removed in PR #1638 (MkDocs migration)
- Original review comment by @ekatef: "Currently, the section is not particularly meaningful, except the palette picture which could get outdated. While the plotting and summary is certainly an important part, I wonder if it could be a sensible solution to drop this section for now adding an issue on tackling this part?"
Acceptance Criteria
- A new
doc/user-guide/plotting.mdpage with practical, up-to-date content - Corresponding entry added back to mkdocs.yml navigation under User Guide
- At least one working example or screenshot of typical plot outputs