This page is mostly focussed on large conventional power plants; see also Hydroelectricity data for hydro-specific data. Datasets of small renewable power plants may have to be treated separately.
Desired data on power plants
For energy model it is useful to know the following data, in rough order of priority
- Plant primary energy (coal/gas/wind/solar/nuclear/hydro etc.)
- Net electrical output capacity (MW)
- Gross electrical output capacity (MW)
- Operational status (in operation, in planning, out of service, etc.)
- Build date
- Efficiency
- Marginal cost
- CO2 emissions in tonnes CO2 per MWh
- Operator name
- Owner name
- Historical data on output/carbon emissions
- Whether it provides heat output
- If heat output: Thermal output capacity (MWth) and dispatch strategy
- Cooling method
Datasets by region
Global
Enipedia
http://enipedia.tudelft.nl/wiki/Portal:Power_Plants
Enpedia was initially based on CARMA, but also pulls in data from Wikipedia and user entries.
Global Energy Observatory (GEO)
http://globalenergyobservatory.org/
Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA)
http://carma.org/
industryAbout
http://www.industryabout.com/energy
Ventus
http://ventus.project.asu.edu/
OpenStreetMap
The OpenStreetMap project has Tags for power plants
Wikipedia
Europe
ENTSO-E Transparency Platform
[1]
All power plants above 100 MW in the ENTSO-E area should be listed, although data is missing
from some countries.
Open Power System Data
Bundesnetzagentur for Germany (Germany's Network Regulator)
The German grid regulator "Bundesnetzagentur" (Federal Network Agency) publishes and regularly updates a list of existing power plants feeding into the German grid (including units in Luxemburg, Austria and Switzerland that are connected to the German grid).
In a separate document, also units that are subject to planned decommissioning or new construction are documented (minimum net power generation capacity: 10 MW).
Further description (in German) and download in .xls and .csv format is available here:
External Link
UBA Database of German Power Plants
http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/dokument/datenbank-kraftwerke-in-deutschland
All plants above 100MW in Germany
RENPASS
http://renpass.eu/
North-West EU 2020 Model
This is an open access Excel database of a North-West European Power System for a sample year 2020. Data and files were collected and complied by researchers at University College Cork, Ireland.
Simplified Power plant portfolios are contained in the *.rar file below [Master Dataset for Distribution]
An associated functioning PLEXOS model and database for teaching and academic research is also provided. The model and model data should be checked and verified by users before use. This current version has not been validated against historic data.
The PLEXOS model includes hourly wind profiles, demand profiles profiles, simplified power plant data, hourly solar profiles and NTC data for Interconnectors. There is a *.xml file [EU Model Carbon _30] which will function in the PLEXOS for Power Systems Software available from Energy Exemplar.
Any improvements/errors or suggestions on the data or model can be sent to Paul Deane [ jp.deane@ucc.ie]. This is a market model based on freely available data for the year 2020.
Please feel free to use as you wish.
Files may be accessed here
File:Master Dataset for Distribution.rar
ELMOD
Some of ELMOD, particularly for Germany is available (but just replicates the BNetzA list?).
Other lists of datasets
Enipedia
Enipedia has a nice list of energy and industry data sets
Enipedia's Elastic Search can search most of the open databases - the challenge is to match the different databases, combine their information and identify missing data (e.g. in the Balkans).
Open Power System Data List of European Network Operator Sites
Many network operators/regulators have online datasets, see the OPSD list of European countries with power plant databases.
