The Public Utility Data Liberation (PUDL) Project

PUDL (pronounced puddle) is a data processing pipeline created by Catalyst Cooperative that cleans, integrates, and standardizes some of the most widely used public energy datasets in the US.

Active

Boulder, CO

The data serve researchers, activists, journalists, and policy makers that might not have the technical expertise to access it in its raw form, the time to clean and prepare the data for bulk analysis, or the means to purchase it from existing commercial providers. Electric utilities report a huge amount of information to the US government and other public agencies. This includes yearly, monthly, and even hourly data about fuel burned, electricity generated, operating expenses, power plant usage patterns and emissions. Unfortunately, much of this data is not released in well documented, ready-to-use, machine readable formats. Data from different agencies tends not to be standardized or easily used in tandem. Several commercial data services clean, package, and re-sell this this data, but at prices which are too high to be accessible to many smaller stakeholders. PUDL cleans, links, and standardizes this data, all for free!