EIA Form 861 – Annual Electric Power Industry Report¶
Source URL |
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Source Description |
EIA Form 861 Annual Electric Power Industry Report, detailed data files. |
Download Size |
91 MB |
Temporal Coverage |
2001-2023 |
PUDL Code |
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Issues |
Open EIA Form 861 – Annual Electric Power Industry Report issues |
PUDL Database Tables¶
We’ve segmented the processed data into the following normalized data tables. Clicking on the links will show you a description of the table as well as the names and descriptions of each of its fields.
Background¶
EIA Form EIA-861 (and the short form EIA-861S) make up the Annual Electric Power Industry Report. This survey is a census of all U.S. electric utilities and collects information about retail sales of electricity and associated revenue on an annual basis.
As of 2023, the EIA-861 Form is organized into the following schedules:
Schedule 1: Identification
Schedule 2: Energy Sources Data
Schedule 3: Distribution Information
Schedule 4: Sales Data
Schedule 5: Mergers and/or Acquisition Information
Schedule 6: Demand-Side Management Information
Schedule 7: Net-Metering Programs Information
Schedule 8: Service Territory Information
There are more than 20 different spreadsheets included in the annual zipfiles. For details, see the official EIA-861 page.
Download additional documentation¶
Data available through PUDL¶
PUDL incorporates annual EIA-861 data starting from 2001 onward. There is also a less detailed monthly Form EIA-861M that is not incorporated into PUDL.
Who submits this data?¶
The Form EIA-861 must be completed by electric power industry entities such as, but not limited to, electric utilities, all Demand Side Management (DSM) Program Managers (entities responsible for conducting or administering a DSM program), wholesale power marketers, energy service providers, electric power producers, transmission owners, transmission operators, and Third Party Owners of solar PV (TPO). Responses are collected at the operating company level (not at the holding company level).
EIA-861S is intended for smaller bundled-service utilities and requires less detailed responses. Respondents respond to either Form EIA-861 or Form EIA-861S. However, to maintain data quality, respondents reporting to EIA-861S are required to complete the full form every eight years.
What does the original data look like?¶
EIA typically publishes 861 data from the prior year in two rounds: an early release in the summer and a final release in the fall. The data are published on the EIA website and distributed as a collection of spreadsheets. The content of the spreadsheets varies from year to year as the questions in the form are updated. EIA also periodically changes the naming and structure of the spreadsheets without warning. Older “final” data may also be revised several years after it was published. To ensure reproducible analyses, we archive versioned snapshots of the EIA-861 data on Zenodo. These archives are periodically refreshed with new data from the EIA website.
To understand the details of how the form and data have evolved over time, we recommend reading the Form Instructions from different years, linked above.
Notable Irregularities¶
Non-unique utility IDs¶
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. §552, the Department of Energy (DOE) regulations,
10 C.F.R. §1004.11, implementing the FOIA, and the Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. §1905 allows
qualifying respondents to restrict access to their data. According to sources at the EIA,
approximately 3 respondents have used this as a means to keep their utility-level data proprietary.
These entries appear under the utility id 88888 in the data.
The EIA also performs state-level imputations and adjustments for more accurate state-level analysis.
These entries appear under the utility id 99999 and are not intended for use in utility-level
aggregations.
Form changes and table discrepancies¶
Not all of the EIA-861 tables exist for all of the reporting years. Both the Form and its output files have changed over time; most notably between 2012 and 2013. Beginning in 2013, the EIA split its Demand Side Management spreadsheet into two: Demand Response and Energy Efficiency in order to reduce ambiguity and ensure data reliability. While there are many similarities between the two years, EIA officials recommend against combining data from these three files, citing subtle differences in Form questions. For these files, the post-2012 DR and EE spreadsheets are considered more accurate.
Cost data rounded to the thousands¶
It’s important to note that all costs are reported to EIA-861 in thousands of dollars. PUDL transforms these values to dollars, but they will still reflect the values rounded to the thousands.
Not yet fully normalized¶
Most of the EIA-861 data that’s available in the PUDL DB has not yet been fully normalized, meaning it contains many duplicate copies of the same information, which may not always be internally consistent.
We also have not yet integrated the Balancing Authority and Utility IDs reported in the EIA-861 into our entity tables, so for the moment we don’t have any foreign key constraints enabled on the EIA-861 tables.
2019 short form¶
In 2019 the data collected from the short form was incorporated into the other published tables rather than as a standalone Short_Form_####.xlsx (where #### is the year) as in other years. We haven’t addressed this discrepancy yet; see details in issue #3654.
PUDL Data Transformations¶
To see the transformations applied to the data in each table, you can read the
docstrings for pudl.transform.eia861 created for each table’s
respective transform function.