News
In January 2017, the project was awarded the first Open Science Award Schleswig-Holstein (press release, press report SHZ).
The first public version of the data platform has been online since 28 October 2016. The platform can be accessed at data.open-power-system-data.org.
Press release on the project launch: "Energy data for all - "Open Power System Data" project launched at EUF".
Brief description
Against the background of the energy transition, the need for reliable quantitative analyses of the electricity system is increasing. The interaction of fluctuating and controllable renewable energies with the existing power plant park raises a variety of questions that are being investigated with computer models. A large number of actors use different types of optimisation, equilibrium and simulation models for this purpose. While these models differ in many respects, there are often common requirements for input data. Such inputs include, for example, the existing conventional and renewable power plant fleet, the time-varying feed-in possibilities of renewable energies and the hourly electricity demand. Until now, modellers have usually had to obtain such parameters from a variety of free and/or commercial sources and then check, cleanse, synchronise and put the data into a format they can use. This creates significant transaction costs and ties up resources that cannot be used for the actual analysis activities. In Germany, for example, several dozen institutions are probably regularly busy collecting and processing current feed-in time series of renewable energies from the various transmission system operators. This seems inefficient to us.
The Open power system data project aims to create a platform for open data. The platform is to provide data needed for power system modelling. This includes, in particular, load and feed-in time series as well as master data of power plants. Existing public data will be collected and aggregated, but no new data will be collected or generated. Initially, the geographical focus will be on Germany, but data from neighbouring European countries will gradually be made available. The data will be made available online centrally, free of charge and under an open licence, such as Creative Commons or the Open Database License. The scripts for processing the data are also to be made available as open sources.
The target group of the platform are modellers and quantitative analysts in research institutions and consultancies as well as analysis departments of market players. The data should not be available on a daily basis, but for a longer period of time. No real-time data and no visualisation are to be made available for journalists or the general public (for this purpose, the BMWi is currently working on the "National Information Platform").
The consortium consists of four partner institutions, DIW Berlin, Europa-Universität Flensburg, Technical University of Berlin, and Neon Neue Energieökonomik and is funded by the BMWi. A series of open workshops will be organised as part of the project. We are also working with experienced experts and the Open Energy Modelling Initiative.
