National Solar PV Monitoring Services

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Owen T Huxley

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Apr 7, 2021, 11:09:47 AM4/7/21
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Dear OpenModers, 

I am surveying national solar PV power data providers and I need to identify as many national solar PV power monitoring services as possible. 

For example, in Great Britain, Sheffield Solar provides data on the national and regional solar PV power generation at the end of each half-hour settlement period. Which you can see here.

I have tried to find data portals for all of the top 20 nations ranked by PV capacity. So far I have found data portals online for Germany, Australia, Great Britain, France, The Netherlands, and Belgium (see links at bottom of email). 

I want to know if I am missing any? As ever with energy data I imagine that these services could be hidden with a TSO or DNO and might be very hard to find. So if you know of a similar tool for another country then please let me know. 

Kind regards, 

Owen

Germany (two) 

Australia

Great Britain

France

The Netherlands

Belgium

Jack Kelly

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Apr 7, 2021, 11:14:26 AM4/7/21
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interesting!

Here's the list of solar PV data sources we've been maintaining over at Open Climate Fix: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tk9cF4O539TzaMaUufn9Ay4f6qKKEyoNKmzP03kbSDo/edit#heading=h.kj1t9w486zpg 

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Robbie Morrison

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Apr 7, 2021, 1:01:55 PM4/7/21
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Hi Owen, all

There might be something useful provided by one of the databases listed here on wikipedia:

Maybe reegle or energydata.info?

The SMARD site run by the German grid regulator might also be of use (with one report highlighted to indicate the type of content):

Worth noting too that solar issues dominate the Open Energy Modelling Initiative's monthly reports from google for web searches that they direct toward openmod assets:

As follows:

[top-searches]

And by country for the openmod wiki:

[by-country]


One might surmise that people in India are looking for information on solar resources and solar installations.

The openmod forum receives virtually no referrals through google search.

with best wishes, Robbie

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Owen T Huxley

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Apr 8, 2021, 7:27:44 AM4/8/21
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Hi Robbie, 

Thanks for the links I hadn't come across the SMARD site before and didn't realise that the ENTSO-E transparency platform actually publishes solar generation data for (almost) all  EU TSOs!! That's super useful, although I can't see any information on how the TSOs come to these estimates of solar PV generation...

Do you (or anyone else on-list) know what license the ENTSO-E data comes with? This article online says that all of the data on the ENTSO-E platform is released under an open data license but they don't specify which license this is? 

Thanks, 

Owen



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Robbie Morrison

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Apr 8, 2021, 9:14:31 AM4/8/21
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Hi Owen, all

On 08/04/2021 13.27, Owen T Huxley wrote:
Do you (or anyone else on-list) know what license the ENTSO-E data comes with? This article online says that all of the data on the ENTSO-E platform is released under an open data license but they don't specify which license this is?

I had not seen that web statement before.  But I remain somewhat careful of sentiments like this:

"Thanks to the implementation of a new data policy, the users of ENTSO-E's Transparency Platform no longer have to seek permission from data owned by transmissions system operators (TSOs) before reusing the data."

For one, the canonical definition for "re‑use" under European Union law (which also came into force before the Brexit transition period had ended and would therefore be part of UK law I imagine) is defined in directive 2019/1024 under section §2.11 as simply "use".  And the concept of "use" has a long tradition under copyright law — and which is nothing like our aspirations.

That web statement goes on to mention that:

"the European TSOs agree to release their data into the platform under an open data licence"

I have not heard anything on that front and will contact ENTSO‑E legal tomorrow.  If anyone has any information, either on‑list or off‑list, I would be really interested to hear!

By the way, the SMARD site is an interesting case.  On prompting from Lion Hirth (an OPSD developer among other things), the site operator BNetzA (the German network regulator) added CC‑BY‑4.0 licenses without the consent of the upstream data providers.  BNetzA have a legal opinion to support that action — I duly asked for a copy and was turned down.

more soon, Robbie

PS: those with an aversion to ASCII 32 might well like these two new German regulations :)

References

European Commission (26 June 2019). "Directive (EU) 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on open data and the re-use of public sector information — PE/28/2019/REV/1". Official Journal of the European Union. L 172: 56–83.

ENTSO‑E (1 February 2019). TSOs increase number of open data available through ENTSO‑E's Transparency Platform. ENTSO‑E.

Robbie Morrison

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Apr 13, 2021, 1:18:57 PM4/13/21
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Hi all

ENTSO‑E kindly replied today.  The new usage conditions for the ENTSO‑E Transparency Platform (TP) are given here:

And this document lists the information covered:

ENTSO‑E advise that they are working to expand the list of balancing data covered and expect that most will be added some time this year.

The information provided is not under a more generally encountered Creative Commons licenses or waivers, for instance, but should be completely workable for energy analysts requiring unencumbered datasets.

Regarding United Kingdom information, the UK left the Internal Energy Market (IEM) on 1 January 2021 and accordingly TSOs and market participants from the UK are no longer obliged to publish their data on the TP.  Notwithstanding, National Grid continues to publish on a voluntary basis.  More on the IEM here:

For completeness, the the blog that started this thread was:

And for additional background on the Transparency Platform:

Again, my thanks to ENTSO‑E for responding promptly and for providing comprehensive answers.

with best wishes, Robbie

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Robbie Morrison

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Apr 14, 2021, 11:59:15 AM4/14/21
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Hi again all

Those ENTSO‑E Transparency Platform legal conditions are now on their way to a database of code and data licenses:

where they will gain a unique identifier and be kept for posterity.

That ScanCode LicenseDB license database, which covers open, proprietary, and indeterminate legal classes, may be of wider interest as well:

The database is designed to support automatic license compliance tooling and is primarily intended for the open source space. It contains all SPDX‑designated licenses, numbering about 500, plus about another 1200 additional licenses. The dataset is apparently the result of over 10 years of careful license collection and curation and is actively maintained and fast evolving. It contains non-FOSS proprietary licenses as well, as long as these are seen being used in the wild and are worth detecting. In addition to these licenses there are also about 28 000 extra texts, notices, mentions, and references that are used to supplement detection.

The ScanCode project has a glitch at present regarding its automatic updating (the last release being 63 days ago) but that should be fixed shortly, with monthly releases thereafter.

More from me as well in a few days as to whether any of the datasets on the ENTSO‑E Transparency Platform attract any kind of intellectual property protection.

with best wishes, Robbie

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