When a U.S. power plant's status changes back, PUDL's EIA-860M changelog misses it

说明与用途

PUDL 的月度变更日志忽略了恢复到先前状态的发电机状态更改，导致与 EIA 2026 工作簿不一致。解决方案是仅将每条记录与同一发电机的前一条记录进行比较。

问题

PUDL’s monthly changelog of EIA‑860M generator records drops a status change that reverts to a previous value, causing discrepancies with EIA’s own 2026 workbooks.

结果

The changelog’s omission rule caused 2,395 mismatches in 2026 data; correcting the rule aligns PUDL with EIA’s workbook for all affected generator‑months.

工作流

• 1. Identify the rule that drops a record if an earlier record with identical values exists.
• 2. Observe that a status change that reverts to a previous value is omitted.
• 3. Pre‑register a test to compare the rule’s output with EIA’s 2026 workbook.
• 4. Run the simulation for January–August 2026 and confirm 2,395 disagreements are resolved.
• 5. Modify the rule to compare each record only with the previous record of the same generator.
• 6. Re‑run the simulation to verify all disagreements are eliminated.
• 7. Recommend checking PUDL data against EIA’s workbook for the current month until the fix is deployed.

证据

All checks passed and all four of my predictions held: The published changelog has no two records of a generator that are equal in every column but the dates (0 of 224,408 rows), which is what the rule implies.

来源

In 2,395 of 299,999 generator-months (January to August 2026) EIA's workbook and the changelog disagree on status, planned month or capacity. A simulation of the rule gives the changelog's value in all 2,395.

来源

The fix is small: compare each record with the previous record of the same generator rather than with its whole history.

来源