---
title: "Open energy system databases"
chunk: 3/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_energy_system_databases"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:49:28.737080+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The Open Data Energy Networks (Open Data Réseaux Énergies or ODRÉ) portal is run by eight partners, led by the French national transmission system operator (TSO) Réseau de Transport d'Électricité (RTE).  The portal was previously known as Open Data RTE.  The site offers electricity system datasets under a Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 compatible license, with metadata, an RSS feed for notifying updates, and an interface for submitting questions.  Re-users of information obtained from the site can also register third-party URLs (be they publications or webpages) against specific datasets.
The portal uses the French Government Licence Ouverte license and this is explicitly compatible with the United Kingdom Open Government Licence (OGL), the Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 license (and thereby later versions), and the Open Data Commons ODC-BY license.
The site hosts electricity, gas, and weather information related to France.

=== UK Power Networks Open Data Portal ===

The Open Data Portal is run by UK Power Networks, a GB Distribution Network Operator (DNO), hosted on the OpenDataSoft platform. The Portal offers electricity network datasets under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 compatible license, with metadata, a newsfeed, and a data request form.  Re-users of information obtained from the site can also register third-party URLs (be they publications or webpages) against specific datasets. A number of download formats, including GIS files, are supported: CSV, XLS, GeoJSON, KML, and SHP. The site also offers an API for automated downloads.
The portal uses the Creative Commons License and also hosts datasets from other sources which are licensed under the Open Government Licence (OGL).
The site hosts electricity datasets related to UK Power Networks' three license areas in London, the East and South East of England.

=== Open Power System Data ===

The Open Power System Data (OPSD) project seeks to characterize the German and western European power plant fleets, their associated transmission network, and related information and to make that data available to energy modelers and analysts.  The platform was originally implemented by the University of Flensburg, DIW Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and the energy economics consultancy Neon Neue Energieökonomik, all from Germany.  The first phase of the project, from August 2015 to July 2017, was funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) for €490000.  The project later received funding for a second phase, from January 2018 to December 2020, with ETH Zurich replacing Flensburg University as a partner.
Developers collate and harmonize data from a range of government, regulatory, and industry sources throughout Europe.  The website and the metadata utilize English, whereas the original material can be in any one of 24 languages.  Datasets follow the emerging frictionless data package standard being developed by Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF).  The website was launched on 28 October 2016.  As of June 2018, the project offers the following primary packages, for Germany and other European countries:

details, including geolocation, of conventional power plants and renewable energy power plants
aggregated generation capacity by technology and country
hourly time series covering electrical load, day-ahead electricity spot prices, and wind and solar resources
a script to filter and download NASA MERRA-2 satellite weather data
In addition, the project hosts selected contributed packages:

electricity demand and self-generation time series for representative south German households
simulated PV and wind generation capacity factor time series for Europe, generated by the Renewables.ninja project
To facilitate analysis, the data is aggregated into large structured files (in CSV format) and loaded into data packages with standardized machine-readable metadata (in JSON format).  The same data is usually also provided as XLSX (Excel) and SQLite files.  The datasets can be accessed in real-time using stable URLs.  The Python scripts deployed for data processing are available on GitHub and carry an MIT license.  The licensing conditions for the data itself depends on the source and varies in terms of openness.  Previous versions of the datasets and scripts can be recovered in order to track changes or replicate earlier studies.  The project also engages with energy data providers, such as transmission system operators (TSO) and ENTSO-E, to encourage them to make their data available under open licenses (for instance, Creative Commons and ODbL licenses).
In a 2019 publication, OPSD developers describe their design choices, implementation, and provisioning.  Information integrity remains key, with each data package having traceable provenance, curation, and packing.  From October 2018, each new or revised data package is assigned a unique DOI to ensure that external references to current and prior versions remain stable.
A number of published electricity market modeling analyses are based on OPSD data.
In 2017, the Open Power System Data project won the Schleswig-Holstein Open Science Award  and the Germany Land of Ideas award.

=== OpenEI ===