Compounding Energy products are built on a foundation of excellent open data and open-source software. This page documents the upstream sources and licences we rely on.
USGS USWTDB & USPVDB — public domain (US wind and solar plant locations and specifications). EIA Form 860 / 860M — public domain (US generating-unit registry, monthly updates). EIA-930 — public domain (US balancing-authority hourly generation, used for skill scoring). ENTSO-E Transparency Platform — under the ENTSO-E API user agreement (European generation, prices, flows). OMIE — free, unauthenticated public downloads under OMIE's public-distribution file model (“Modelo de Ficheros para la distribución pública de información”), which permits public redistribution; source: OMIE (cleared MIBEL day-ahead prices — the Spanish and Portuguese day-ahead prices CEGridSight publishes are OMIE's own published values, and the same file is our Iberian ground truth for accuracy grading). Elexon BMRS — under the Elexon Open Data Licence (GB market data). Contains BMRS data © Elexon Limited copyright and database right 2026. NESO Open Data — under the NESO Open Licence (GB system data). Supported by National Energy SO Open Data. Day-ahead prices: N2EX GB Day-Ahead Price, published by NESO; the hourly series itself is not republished here. National Grid ESO Carbon Intensity API — Creative Commons BY 4.0 (GB carbon intensity). PV_Live (University of Sheffield) — used with attribution (GB solar outturn estimates). Open-Meteo — Weather data by Open-Meteo.com, licensed under Creative Commons BY 4.0 and accessed under a paid commercial API subscription (Open-Meteo’s free tier is for non-commercial use only); processed by Compounding Energy into our wind, solar, power-price and revenue forecasts (NWP weather forecasts and reanalysis, including the ECMWF IFS runs behind CEGridSight’s wind and solar inputs). UK Met Office — contains Met Office data © Crown copyright, licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 (Met Office UKMO model forecasts, via Open-Meteo, in CompoundVision’s Great Britain wind and solar forecasts, and in any CEGridSight run that applies that CompoundVision shape, which is off by default). Global Power Plant Database (WRI) — Creative Commons BY 4.0 (initial seed for non-US thermal units). ECB euro foreign exchange reference rates — European Central Bank (currency conversion). ERA5 (ECMWF) — Copernicus licence; contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information (1940–2025) (hourly weather reanalysis behind the CEAtlas capacity-factor store). CEGridSight: contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026 (ERA5 via the Open-Meteo archive, behind its wind power-curve fits and Great Britain weather history). Global Wind Atlas — Creative Commons BY 4.0, © DTU / World Bank Group / ESMAP (250 m wind resource downscaling layer). Global Solar Atlas — Creative Commons BY 4.0, © World Bank Group / ESMAP / Solargis (250 m solar resource downscaling layer).
The CEAtlas United States layers are built from the public and openly licensed sources below. The full per-layer list, with each attribution string, is on the CEAtlas licences page.
Service territories and market boundaries. HIFLD Open — Oak Ridge National Laboratory / DHS HIFLD Open (electric retail service territories, Feb 2025 issue; natural gas LDC service territories, 2017 issue; control areas; NERC reliability coordinators and regions; FERC regions), via Public Environmental Data Partners — US public data, no use restriction. HIFLD Open closed on 26 August 2025; these boundaries are its last public issue, frozen, and drift from today’s utilities. An archived copy is published by SeerAI on Source Cooperative under Creative Commons BY 4.0. EIA Form EIA-861 (2024) and EIA Form EIA-176 (2024) — public domain (utility customers, sales, revenue and prices; gas-utility customers). EIA-930 balancing-authority register (2026) — public domain. U.S. Census Bureau cartographic boundary files and Gazetteer files (2024) — public domain. Ontario LDC and natural gas distributor boundaries — Open Government Licence – Ontario (“Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Ontario”). Natural Earth — public domain. Electricity border crossings — North American Cooperation on Energy Information (NRCan / EIA / SENER, 2017), Open Government Licence – Canada; U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity, Presidential Permits — public domain.
Generation. United States Wind Turbine Database v9.0 (26 June 2026) — U.S. Geological Survey, American Clean Power Association and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; public domain (Hoen, B.D., et al., 2018, United States Wind Turbine Database v9.0 (June 26, 2026): USGS, ACP and LBNL data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/F7TX3DN0). Canadian Wind Turbine Database — Natural Resources Canada (updated 24 April 2026); “Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada”. United States Large-Scale Solar Photovoltaic Database v4.0 (April 2026) — U.S. Geological Survey and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; public domain (Fujita, K.S., Ancona, Z.H., Kramer, L.A., et al., 2026, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9IA3TUS). EIA Form EIA-860M — public domain; “U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-860M Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory (<Month YYYY>); change classification by CEAtlas” (Plant Changes, planned units and the US build pipeline in the Fleet Census). EIA Form EIA-923 — public domain (metered generation used to check the resource record).
Fuel supply and geology. U.S. Energy Information Administration — public domain (“Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)”): natural gas processing plants (EIA-757), underground storage fields with EIA-191 (2024) capacity, LNG terminals and U.S. Liquefaction Capacity, border crossings, trading hubs, the Natural Gas Pipeline Projects tracker (Aug 2026), EIA-7A Annual Coal Production (2024), tight oil and shale gas plays and sedimentary basins. U.S. EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, RY2023 — public domain (large industrial emitters, emissions only). Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) Mines data set — public domain. Natural Resources Canada — Principal Mineral Areas, Producing Mines, and Oil and Gas Fields (900A), 2025, Open Government Licence – Canada. North American Cooperation on Energy Information (NACEI) — NRCan / EIA / SENER, Open Government Licence – Canada (Canadian and Mexican gas facilities). U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 96-92 (Tully, 1996), Coal Fields of the Conterminous United States — public domain. Stanford Thermal Earth Model for the Conterminous United States — Creative Commons BY 4.0; “Aljubran, M., & Horne, R. (2024). Stanford Thermal Earth Model for the Conterminous United States [Dataset]. Geothermal Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.15121/2324793”. The geothermal layer is a model, not a measurement. OpenStreetMap — ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors (gas compressor stations and pipeline geometry).
Site screening: hazards and land. FEMA National Risk Index v1.20 (December 2025) — OpenFEMA terms of use. This product uses the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s OpenFEMA API, but is not endorsed by FEMA. Wildfire Hazard Potential for the United States (270 m), version 2023 — USDA Forest Service, usable without additional permissions or fees (Dillon, G.K. 2023. USDA Forest Service RDS-2015-0047-4). Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) 4.1 — U.S. Geological Survey Gap Analysis Project, public domain (https://doi.org/10.5066/P96WBCHS). Bureau of Land Management — Solar Energy Zones and Section 368 designated energy corridors, public domain. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management — offshore wind lease outlines, public domain. GHS-POP R2023A (epoch 2025) — European Commission Joint Research Centre, Creative Commons BY 4.0, © European Union (Schiavina M., Freire S., Carioli A., MacManus K. (2023), doi:10.2905/2FF68A52-5B5B-4A22-8F40-C41DA8332CFE). Power of Place-West — The Nature Conservancy; Wu, G.C. et al. (2023), Minimizing habitat conflicts in meeting net-zero energy targets in the western United States, PNAS; data release v2, doi:10.5281/zenodo.11268042; Creative Commons BY 4.0 (attribution: The Nature Conservancy / Wu et al. 2023). Shown as schematic scenario-analysis data per TNC’s use limitation, not a siting determination. County borders — U.S. Census Bureau (public domain); Statistics Canada, 2021 Census – Boundary files (Statistics Canada Open Licence; “Adapted from Statistics Canada, 2021 Census – Boundary files (census divisions, cartographic), 2022. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.”); INEGI, Marco Geoestadístico 2024 (Términos de Libre Uso de la Información del INEGI; “Fuente: INEGI, Marco Geoestadístico 2024 (áreas geoestadísticas municipales). Simplified by Compounding Energy for web display; not an official INEGI product.”). The hazard layers are relative screening indices, not site-specific probabilities, and none of these sources endorses CEAtlas.
The CEAtlas Site Value (indicative wind and solar LCOE), Site Development Cost and Civil Works Adders layers (October 2026: cost book 2026-10d, civil-works edition civil-2026-10a) use the sources below, in addition to ERA5, the Global Wind Atlas and the Global Solar Atlas listed above. The method and scope are described in the release note.
Costs and price levels. NREL Annual Technology Baseline 2025, Creative Commons BY 4.0 (equipment capex and fixed O&M; Moderate, R&D cost drivers; land-based wind class 4 and utility PV class 4; 2023 USD). World Bank World Development Indicators, Creative Commons BY 4.0 (PPP conversion factor and official exchange rate for price levels). European Central Bank 2025 exchange rates (currency basis). Texas Department of Transportation statewide average low bid unit prices, items 110 and 132, twelve-month moving values, August 2024 (earthworks prices). FHWA National Highway Construction Cost Index, public domain. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, public domain; Office for National Statistics, Open Government Licence v3.0; Eurostat, © European Union, reuse authorised with acknowledgement of the source (labour and civil-engineering price levels).
Grid and terrain. PyPSA-Eur and GridKit grid data, © OpenStreetMap contributors, Open Database Licence. Natural Earth, public domain (lake and permanent-ice masking). Copernicus DEM GLO-90, produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30 © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved (slope). Copernicus Emergency Management Service / JRC river flood hazard maps, © European Union, Creative Commons BY 4.0 (flood shares).
Ground conditions and hazards. USDA NRCS gNATSGO, July 2020, CC0 (bedrock depth, water table, hydrologic group, Vertisols and Histosols). BGS GeoSure 5 km hex v8, contains British Geological Survey materials © UKRI 2019, Open Government Licence. USGS karst map (Weary and Doctor, 2014), public domain. BRGM / Géorisques shrink-swell clay exposure, Licence Ouverte 2.0. NatureScot Carbon and Peatland 2016, classes 1 and 2, contains SNH information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. PEATMAP (Xu et al., 2018, University of Leeds), Creative Commons BY 4.0. The Coal Authority Development High Risk Area, Open Government Licence v3.0. USGS Mineral Resources Data System, public domain. US EPA LMOP, Superfund (NPL, SEMS) and ACRES brownfields, public domain. European Environment Agency Industrial Reporting under the IED, E-PRTR 5(d) landfills, Creative Commons BY 4.0. Public borehole records, each record’s source and attribution are shown in the CEAtlas Boreholes & ground investigations layer.
Day-ahead LMPs are fetched directly from each ISO's public endpoint: CAISO OASIS, ERCOT MIS, MISO Public Reports, NYISO Public Data, ISO-NE Web Services, and SPP Marketplace. Each ISO's terms govern that data and are inherited by users; we cache and serve under fair-use research provisions.
The CENovaSage accuracy scorecard compares each forecast with the markets’ own published prices — NYISO, MISO, ISO-NE, PJM Data Miner 2, SPP Marketplace and CAISO OASIS public data, and ERCOT day-ahead prices via gridstatus.io — under each source’s own terms. These feeds are used for scoring only and are not redistributed; what is published is the forecast-versus-actual comparison.
HiGHS — MIT (LP/MIP solver). NumPy / SciPy / Polars / pandas — BSD. FastAPI / Starlette — MIT. LightGBM — MIT. CesiumJS — Apache 2.0. Next.js / React — MIT. PostgreSQL / Redis — PostgreSQL Licence / BSD. Full SBOMs are available to Enterprise customers (and Desk customers on request).
CartoDB Positron and Voyager basemaps under their attribution licence; OpenStreetMap data under ODbL.
CEAtlas, CEGridSight, CompoundVision, CECadence, CENovaSage, CEForesight, CESentinel, CEVentus, CEHelios, CEMeridian, CEDeris, CENovaFuels, and Compounding Energy are trademarks of the Compounding Energy operator. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Questions about this document? Email privacy@compoundingenergy.com.