by Shane Henson — May 20, 2013—As part of the Energy Data Initiative , the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), its Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and the Planetary Skin Institute released this month a new open tool to better visualize energy data and make this information more available and useful for state and local governments, private industry, and other energy researchers. The Free Energy Data platform (FRED) builds on the broader Energy Data Initiative—making energy usage and generation data more transparent, while accelerating the transition to a clean energy future, says the DOE.
As the DOE notes, governments and corporations face challenges when planning, investing, and monitoring their progress towards a more sustainable energy future. Energy data and analytics play a pivotal role in effectively planning for long-term energy solutions, which can save money and help protect the environment. However, such data is often difficult to harness. FRED helps to address this challenge by corralling energy use data from diverse sources, normalizing it into a common format, and then displaying it in a variety of interesting ways.
FRED’s primary data is drawn from the Energy Information Administration’s State Energy Data System (SEDS) and Annual Energy Outlook (AEO), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) efficiency data, and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). FRED assembles this data into a seamless, comprehensive picture of energy supply and demand from 1960 through 2035, across all fuel types and demand sectors, for both the nation and each state.
Dynamic but easy to use, FRED also allows users to enter their own data and compare their performance with other jurisdictions and institutions, or track performance over time, says the DOE. Data can also be viewed in graphical formats showing present and past energy demand by fuel and sector; this data can be compared across jurisdictions as well as through flow diagrams that visualize how multiple sectors use different energy sources.
