---
title: "Open energy system databases"
chunk: 4/5
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"
---

Open Energy Information (OpenEI) is a collaborative website, run by the US government, providing open energy data to software developers, analysts, users, consumers, and policymakers.  The platform is sponsored by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and is being developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).  OpenEI launched on 9 December 2009.  While much of its data is from US government sources, the platform is intended to be open and global in scope.
OpenEI provides two mechanisms for contributing structured information: a semantic wiki (using MediaWiki and the Semantic MediaWiki extension) for collaboratively-managed resources and a dataset upload facility for contributor-controlled resources.  US government data is distributed under a CC0 public domain dedication, whereas other contributors are free to select an open data license of their choice.  Users can rate data using a five-star system, based on accessibility, adaptability, usefulness, and general quality.  Individual datasets can be manually downloaded in an appropriate format, often as CSV files. Scripts for processing data can also be shared through the site.  In order to build a community around the platform, a number of forums are offered covering energy system data and related topics.
Most of the data on OpenEI is exposed as linked open data (LOD) (described elsewhere on this page).  OpenEI also uses LOD methods to populate its definitions throughout the wiki with real-time connections to DBPedia, reegle, and Wikipedia.
OpenEI has been used to classify geothermal resources in the United States.  And to publicize municipal utility rates, again within the US.

=== OpenGridMap ===

OpenGridMap employs crowdsourcing techniques to gather detailed data on electricity network components and then infer a realistic network structure using methods from statistics and graph theory.  The scope of the project is worldwide and both distribution and transmission networks can be reverse engineered.  The project is managed by the Chair of Business Information Systems, TUM Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.  The project maintains a website and a Facebook page and provides an Android mobile app to help the public document electrical devices, such as transformers and substations.  The bulk of the data is being made available under a Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 IGO license.  The processing software is written primarily in Python and MATLAB and is hosted on GitHub.
OpenGridMap provides a tailored GIS web application, layered on OpenStreetMap, which contributors can use to upload and edit information directly.  The same database automatically stores field recordings submitted by the mobile app.  Subsequent classification by experts allows normal citizens to document and photograph electrical components and have them correctly identified.  The project is experimenting with the use of hobby drones to obtain better information on associated facilities, such as photovoltaic installations.  Transmission line data is also sourced from and shared with OpenStreetMap.  Each component record is verified by a moderator.
Once sufficient data is available, the transnet software is run to produce a likely network, using statistical correlation, Voronoi partitioning, and minimum spanning tree (MST) algorithms.  The resulting network can be exported in CSV (separate files for nodes and lines), XML, and CIM formats.  CIM models are well suited for translation into software-specific data formats for further analysis, including power grid simulation.  Transnet also displays descriptive statistics about the resulting network for visual confirmation.
The project is motivated by the need to provide datasets for high-resolution energy system models, so that energy system transitions (like the German Energiewende) can be better managed, both technically and policy-wise.  The rapid expansion of renewable generation and the anticipated uptake of electric vehicles means that electricity system models must increasingly represent distribution and transmission networks in some detail.
As of 2017, OpenGridMap techniques have been used to estimate the low voltage network in the German city of Garching and to estimate the high voltage grids in several other countries.

=== Power Explorer ===

The Power Explorer portal is a part of the larger Resource Watch platform, hosted by the World Resources Institute.  The initial Global Power Plant Database, an open source database of the power plants globally, was released in April 2018.  As of May 2021, the portal itself is still under development.
Power Explorer is also supported by Google with various research partners, including KTH, Global Energy Observatory, Enipedia, and OPSD.

=== The Public Utility Data Liberation Project (PUDL) ===

The Public Utility Data Liberation Project (PUDL) maintains an open source data processing pipeline that cleans, integrates, and standardizes some of the most widely used public energy datasets in the US. This includes data from FERC, EIA, EPA, the SEC, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the Rural Utilities Service, and other public agencies, as well as privately created datasets that have been published under Creative Commons licenses. Data products are updated frequently, with nightly build outputs published to free, public cloud buckets and quarterly versioned releases archived on Zenodo. PUDL's primary focus is on providing programmatically usable bulk data describing the physical, financial, and operational characteristics of the electricity system. The project also includes information about the US natural gas system and utility parent-subsidiary relationships. The data is intended to serve public-interest users that lack the technical expertise, time, or financial resources to process the data themselves or obtain it from commercial data providers.

The PUDL project was initiated by Catalyst Cooperative in 2017 and the worker co-op remains the primary maintainer. It has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, Climate Change AI, GridLab, RMI, and the AWS Open Data Registry.

=== PowerGenome ===

The PowerGenome project aims to provide a coherent dataset covering the United States electricity system.  PowerGenome was initially designed to service the GenX model, but support for other modeling frameworks is in planning.  The PowerGenome utility also pulls from upstream datasets hosted by the Public Utility Data Liberation project (PUDL) and the EIA, so those dependencies need to be met by users.  Datasets are occasionally archived on Zenodo.  A video describing the project is available.

=== reegle ===