CEC Power Plants, California

The transmission line, substation and power plant mapping database were started in 1990 by the CEC GIS staffs. The final project was completed in October 2010. The enterprise GIS system on CEC's critical infrastructure database was leaded by GIS Unit in November 2014 and was implemented in May 2016.

The data was derived from CEC's Quarterly Fuel and Energy Report (QFER), Energy Facility Licensing (Siting), Wind Performance Reporting System (WPRS), and Renewable Energy Action Team (REAT). The sources for the power plant point digitizing are including sub-meter resolution of Digital Globe, Bing, Google, ESRI and NAIP aerial imageries, with scale at least 1:10,000. Occasionally, USGS Topographic map, Google Street View and Bing Bird's Eye are used to verify the precise location of a facility. Although a power plant may have multiple generators, or units, the power plant layer represents all units at a plant as one feature.

Detailed attribute information associated with the power plant layer includes CEC Plant ID, Plant Label, Plant Capacity (MW), General Fuel, Plant Status, CEC Project Status, CEC Docket ID, REAT ID, Plant County, Plant State, Renewable Energy, Wind Resource Area, Local Reliability Area, Sub Area, Electric Service Area, Service Area Category, California Balancing Authorities, California Air District, California Air Basin, Quad Name, Senate District, Assembly District, Congressional District, Power Project Web Link, CEC Link, Aerial, QRERGEN Comment, WPRS Comment, Geoscience Comment, Carto Comment, QFERGEN Excel Link, WPRS Excel Link, Schedule 3 Excel Link, and CEC Data Source. For power plant layer which is joined with QFer database, additional fields are displayed: CEC Plant Name (full name), Plant Alias, EIA Plant ID, Plant City, Initial Start Date, Online Year, Retire Date, Generator or Turbine Count, RPS Eligible, RPS Number, Operator Company Name, and Prime Mover ID. In general, utility and non-utility operated power plant spatial data with at least 1 MW of demonstrated capacity and operating status are distributed. Special request is required on power plant spatial data with all capacities and all stages of status, including Cold Standby, Indefinite Shutdown, Maintenance, Non-Operational, Proposed, Retired, Standby, Terminated, and Unknown.