EIA923 - out_eia__monthly_generators vs. core_eia923__monthly_generation

[Ylawy]

Hi there,

I have been looking at your data dictionaries to get a better look at the data from the EIA923 form and there is a lot of data available which is wonderful. So thank you for making this available to the public. However, I noticed that there are 2 data types related to monthly generation data, which are
core_eia923__monthly_generation and out_eia__monthly_generators, and I'm confused as to what the difference in those actually is. data series out_eia__monthly_generators seems more granular, but they seem to hold similar data or am I wrong? What exactly do the "out" and "core" stand for?

Also, in terms of heat rate, what would be the best data series to form an opinion for a particular region on monthly granularity (let's say Pennsylvania)? At the moment there are 22 different data series containing the term "heat_rate" that I'm a bit overwhelmed what data series is the right one.

Thank you very much.

[bendnorman]

Great questions! Generally, you should refer to tables with the out prefix. The core tables are joined together to create the denormalized out tables which are easier to work with. You can read more about the table naming conventions in the documentation.

The out_eia__monthly_generators table is our attempt at collating most generator attributes into one table. It contains heat rate and net generation information, see columns: net_generation_mwh and unit_heat_rate_mmbtu_per_mwh.

core_eia923__monthly_generation is one table that feeds into the final out_eia__monthly_generators table. All generators in core_eia923__monthly_generation exist in out_eia__monthly_generators.