(ORNL: Oak Ridge, TN) -- The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity, in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has launched an experimental platform for energy sector-related data with enhanced emphasis on governance and usability. The Open Energy Hub is a connection hub of datasets from various sources, including federal, state, academia, and private-sector entities, providing information and visualizations on details such as energy use, supply, and availability.

Project lead Supriya Chinthavali acknowledged that many open data portals exist, but the Open Energy Hub is novel in its data triage process and in being a “catalog of catalogs.” With open data sharing come sensitivity and privacy concerns. This is where the team’s data triage process comes into play, helping determine the privacy risk level for each dataset.

The team initially adopted the concept based on the United Kingdom’s energy data strategy, where open data triage was introduced. The team had to consider open data when building an open data portal.

“We really started to think about creating a data ecosystem as opposed to a siloed set of data management platforms,” says Chinthavali, Critical Infrastructure Resilience group leader at ORNL. “We want data consumers and providers seamlessly working together, understanding each other’s needs and eventually improving the quality of data.”

Chinthavali notes the open portal is a two-way exchange. Users can pull data from the hub and add energy data to the catalog. So far, the hub includes data and metadata from approximately 100 sources, including ORNL databases such as the Environment for Analysis of Geo-Located Energy Information, or EAGLE-I, and the Outage Data Initiative Nationwide, or ODIN.

External data are available from partners such as the Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment Deployment and the Grid Evaluation tool for electric-vehicle charger capacity data, as well as the Maryland Emergency Management Agency’s statewide power outage data map. Each individual contributor hosts its own data, allowing rapid expansion while keeping the department’s costs relatively low.

Open Energy Hub’s user experience also includes data profiling, a term that means users can see a visual example of the data in a chart, map, or graph before downloading the entire data set, Chinthavali says.

The ORNL team provides a risk score for each data set, with the goal of opening all data sets at least to some degree, even if they weren’t shareable previously. ORNL’s role is to sift through the data and provide the cleanest data possible to the public.

“We sit with each PI and ask questions such as, ‘What is the likelihood of a particular issue happening and, if it happens, what is the impact?’” Chinthavali says.

The users could be anyone, Chinthavali says, because the Open Energy Hub is open to the general public. However, she envisions frequent users will be within the energy-sector research community, including academia and other national labs. These users represent a wide range of case studies, which is why the team enabled the hub with flexibility for data exploration. Users can view maps and charts, as well as access data through application programming interfaces, or download the entire dataset.

And what if the data a user hopes to find aren’t there?

“We’re encouraging submission of those requests, because this is where Energy can really understand where the data gaps are and do something about it,” Chinthavali says.

The Open Energy Hub can be accessed at https://openenergyhub.ornl.gov/.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Data Catalog and Portal is an exploration of a comprehensive digital platform designed to facilitate access to a wide range of energy-related data for researchers, policymakers, industry professionals, and the public. This initiative aligns with Energy’s commitment to transparency, innovation, and collaboration in energy research and policy development.

ORNL’s Supriya Chinthavali leads the Open Energy Hub project, a groundbreaking platform that bridges gaps in energy data access and collaboration. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Department of Energy