Glossary
generator inventory
generator inventory is asset-level registry of electricity generators collected annually through EIA Form EIA-860, listing individual units rather than aggregated flows, which the catalog classifies as a data product category. Datadory's catalog of 1,744 datasets documents it directly in EIA Form EIA-860 — Annual Electric Generator Inventory.
What is generator inventory?
An asset-level registry of electricity generators collected annually through EIA Form EIA-860, listing individual units rather than aggregated flows.
It pairs naturally with the Electric Power Annual and Monthly, which summarize generation statistically.
In this catalog it appears concretely: - EIA Form EIA-860 — Annual Electric Generator Inventory.
Why does generator inventory matter when choosing a dataset?
A label on a listing is not a deliverable. Teams that license on the strength of a product-name match routinely find the shipped files cover a narrower slice than they assumed, and backfilling history afterwards costs more than the license ever did.
The failure mode is concrete: the label appears in a listing, the delivered files tell a different story, and the gap surfaces mid-project when fixing it is most expensive.
You rarely have to take a vendor's word for it. 82.4% of the 1,744 datasets Datadory catalogs are free to access, and EIA Form EIA-860 — Annual Electric Generator Inventory lets you inspect the real artifact before any budget is committed.
How do you evaluate generator inventory in a data source?
Treat every claim of this attribute as testable:
- Open EIA Form EIA-860 — Annual Electric Generator Inventory and compare its listing against the delivered artifact before paying for a commercial equivalent.
- Pin down update cadence in writing. Across this catalog, 22.6% of 1,744 datasets refresh daily and 64 still arrive only through a manual request form, so ask exactly how fresh each release is.
- Check whether definitions are verified at all. Field definitions are verified for 1495 of 1,744 datasets (85.7%), and any source you license should meet that bar.
- Price the delivery route before the license. In this catalog bulk download is the most common access method (725 datasets) ahead of official APIs (574), and 379 sources still require scraping — a maintenance cost that lands on you, not the vendor.
See the term applied to real records: electric-utilities data, independent-power-producers-energy-traders data.
Related terms
Adjacent concepts worth reading next: - electric power annual - electric power monthly
Frequently asked questions
What is an example of generator inventory?
EIA Form EIA-860 — Annual Electric Generator Inventory is the clearest example in this catalog. Its listing is the reference point for this pattern. Across all 1,744 datasets Datadory averages a quality score of 7.81 out of 10, so a named example can be weighed rather than trusted blindly.
Is data described as "generator inventory" free to use?
Treat access and permission separately. 82.4% of the 1,744 datasets in this catalog are free to access, but 235 are freemium and 61 are paid outright, so confirm both the price and the license on the exact distribution before building on it.
Datasets containing this field
Datasets containing generator inventory
6 datasets carry generator inventory in the catalog. Open one, count the fields, judge for yourself.
EIA Consumption & Efficiency - Electricity Surveys (RECS/CBECS/MECS)
CAISO OASIS — Open Access Same-time Information System
EIA API Technical Documentation (v2 Routes & Facets)
EIA Electric Power Annual
EIA Electric Power Monthly
PJM Markets & Operations — LMP, Load, Fuel Mix and Reserves Data
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