Form EIA-861: Annual U.S. Electric Utility Data on Operations, Customers, and Programs

11 Excel files and one Word file detail the U.S. electric power industry for 2009, with data structure applicable to prior years. The data originates from the mandatory EIA-861 survey submitted by utilities, power marketers, and federal administrations. It covers operational aggregates, retail sales by state and customer class, demand-side management programs, green pricing, net metering, and distributed generation.

Use Cases

• Forecasting regional peak electricity demand based on reported peak load and load management data.
• Analyzing the adoption and financial impact of renewable energy programs based on green pricing and net metering metrics.
• Modeling utility customer segmentation and revenue trends using state-level sales and customer count data.
• Assessing the penetration and capacity of distributed energy resources from reported distributed generation figures.
• Tracking utility industry consolidation and technology adoption using merger and advanced meter data from 2007 forward.

Strengths

• Data is reported at a granular utility and state level for all 50 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, and U.S. territories.
• Contains multiple thematic files (e.g., operations, customers, programs) allowing for cross-sectional analysis.
• Includes time-series data with a consistent file structure noted for years prior to 2009.
• Specifies units for key metrics: sales in megawatt-hours, peak data in megawatts (2001+), and revenue in thousand dollars.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) via the mandatory Form EIA-861 survey.

Collection Method

Collected via the annual 'Annual Electric Power Industry Report' survey from electric utilities.

Time Range

Primary file is for calendar year 2009, with structure applicable to data from prior years (1990+).

Freshness

Data is final for the reported year (2009), but update frequency for the platform is unknown.

Geography

United States, including all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.