The quality of electricity system modelling heavily depends on the input data used. Although a lot of data is publicly available, it is often dispersed, tedious to process and partly contains errors. We argue that a central provision of input data for modelling has the character of a public good: it reduces overall societal costs for quantitative energy research as redundant work is avoided, and it improves transparency and reproducibility in electricity system modelling. This paper describes the Open Power System Data platform that aims at realising the efficiency and quality gains of centralised data provision by collecting, checking, processing, aggregating, documenting and publishing data required by most modellers. We conclude that the platform can provide substantial benefits to energy system analysis by raising efficiency of data pre-processing, providing a method for making data pre-processing for energy system modelling traceable, flexible and reproducible and improving the quality of original data published by data providers.

This is the postprint version of the article