Reference · built on requestCommons signalEnergy & grid

NESO Data Portal

Great Britain system operator datasets: demand forecasts, balancing costs, carbon intensity, and frequency through a CKAN API.

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About

The NESO Data Portal is the open data catalogue of the National Energy System Operator for Great Britain. It runs on CKAN and groups datasets into data groups such as demand, balancing, carbon intensity, constraint management, interconnectors, network charges, and connection registers. Each dataset is licensed individually under the NESO Open Data Licence.

An operator on Fibric reads the Day Ahead and 2-14 Days Ahead Demand Forecast rows through the datastore, notes the forecast peaks for your sites' half-hours, and proposes staged loads or a Demand Flexibility Service response for your approval.

This is a reference listing. It documents what Fibric would read from NESO Data Portal and what it could propose, based on the publisher's published interfaces. Fibric builds it under a managed deployment when you request it; selecting it here installs nothing.

Inputs

  • Dataset and data group listings through package_list, package_search, package_show, and organization_list at api.neso.energy/api/3/action
  • Tabular rows through datastore_search, and PostgreSQL queries through datastore_search_sql with resource ids in double quotes
  • Day Ahead Demand Forecast and 2-14 Days Ahead Demand Forecast, as half-hourly and cardinal point CSV resources
  • National, regional, and country carbon intensity forecasts in the carbon intensity data group
  • Historic Demand Data: demand, interconnector, pumping, STOR, wind, and solar outturn, populated 21 days in arrears
  • System Frequency for Great Britain at 1 second resolution in monthly CSV files, timestamped in GMT
  • Daily Balancing Services Use of System (BSUoS) cost data and Demand Flexibility Service event and utilisation files

Proposed actions

Read-only. This feed informs operators; it changes nothing.

Proposed actions are target capabilities. Every action runs propose-first and needs a validated deployment and the appropriate permissions.

What you can build

  • Stage loads off the forecast evening peak

    Read the Day Ahead Demand Forecast each morning, mark the highest half-hours, and propose a pre-cooling or staged-load plan for your buildings. You approve it; the receipt records the forecast row used.

    With Peak Demand

  • Turn a Demand Flexibility Service notice into a plan

    When a DFS requirement or event file appears, draft a curtailment window for the sites that can shed load, checked against meters and equipment state, and hold it for your sign-off.

    With Event Response, Battery Dispatch

  • Pick the cleanest hours from the national forecast

    Read the National Carbon Intensity Forecast, which NESO updates hourly, and propose shifting flexible loads and EV charging into the lowest-intensity hours.

    With Carbon Window

Requirements

  • The dataset id and resource id for each series you read, taken from the dataset page or package_show
  • A CKAN client, or plain HTTP GET calls to the api/3/action endpoints
  • Request pacing of one CKAN call per second and two datastore calls per minute
  • Attribution reading "Supported by National Energy SO Open Data" wherever the data is republished
Authentication
None. The CKAN action and datastore endpoints answer without a key, and NESO's API guidance names no registration step.

Limits

  • NESO states it may block an IP address that exceeds the one-per-second CKAN or two-per-minute datastore limits
  • Historic Demand Data carries a data quality notice and is corrected retrospectively, sometimes months after first publication
  • Update frequency differs per dataset and some, such as the Demand Flexibility Service 2023/24 files, are no longer updated
  • The Open Data Licence lets NESO throttle or limit feed access if use degrades service performance

Access and pricing

Reference listing. Public feed access is separate from Fibric integration. If you request this feed, your quote covers the build, usage, and support.

Request NESO Data Portal ↗

Questions and answers

Do you need an API key for the NESO Data Portal?
No. The API guidance describes the CKAN actions and datastore queries at api.neso.energy without any key or registration. It does set rate limits: one request per second for CKAN calls and two per minute for datastore queries, and NESO says it may block addresses that exceed them.
How often are the demand forecasts updated?
The 2-14 Days Ahead Demand Forecast files are updated twice daily, at 09:20 and 14:20. The National Carbon Intensity Forecast is listed as hourly. Historic Demand Data is populated 21 days in arrears. Other datasets state their own frequency on their dataset page.
What licence covers the data?
The NESO Open Data Licence v1.0, which NESO describes as based on version 3.0 of the Open Government Licence with amendments for NESO. It permits copying, adapting, and commercial use, requires the attribution "Supported by National Energy SO Open Data", and is applied to each dataset individually.
Ask about NESO Data Portal

Ask about the capabilities and requirements in this listing.

For project-specific requirements, contact Fibric.

This Commons signal listing is developed, published, and supported by Fibric. It reads public data published by National Energy System Operator, NESO (api.neso.energy). Upstream agencies and projects are the property of their respective owners, who are not affiliated with Fibric and do not sponsor or endorse this listing. Trademark policy