I've started exploring an open dataset that should be very useful for research on residential solar energy (for example studying energy self-consumption with a PV-battery system).
My Python code to manipulate this dataset and some preliminary studies (simple statistics) is freely available on Github: https://github.com/pierre-haessig/ausgrid-solar-data. This data exploration code is extensively using pandas (for slicing, grouping, resampling, etc.).
[May 2026 update: download link to a copy of the dataset, no longer available on Ausgrid website https://pierreh.eu/downloads/Ausgrid_solar_home_data.zip]
About the dataset
The “Solar home electricity dataset” is made available by Ausgrid, an Australian electric utility which operates the distribution grid in Sidney and nearby areas.
This dataset contains a pretty rich record:
- electricity consumption and the PV production
- of 300 customers (in Sidney and its area),
- over three years (July 2010 to June 2013),
- with a 30 minutes timestep.
Here is a small extract of the PV production for 3 randomly chosen customers, over 3 days in July 2011:
Many more plots and statistics are given in the Jupyter notebooks available on the Github repository.
Locating postcodes (geocoding)
Also, the exploration of this dataset was an occasion to discover the Google Maps Geocoding API. Indeed, the location of each anonymous customer is given by a postcode only. To enable quantitative study of the spatiotemporal pattern in PV production, I've tried to locate this postcodes. The Python code for this is in the Postcodes location.ipynb Notebook. Map plotting is done with cartopy.
Extracted from this notebook, here is an overview of the locations of the postcodes present in the dataset (in Australia, NSW). Red rectangles are the boundaries of each postcode, as returned by Google maps (small in urban areas along the coast, gigantic otherwise).
2019-11-11 update: fixing broken link to dataset webpage on Ausgrid website.
Mr pierre; i'am a phd student, i want to have permission to use the 'postcode areas' image in one of my articles. best regards
Thank you for your interest! I've updated my ausgrid-solar-data repository (e.g. all links to Ausgrid website were broken). In particular, I've added a LICENSE file to state that all my analyses are available as CC BY 4.0. This should satisfy your need. Also, I cited the article of the original authors of the dataset which it may be fair citing if you use their data in an article.
Thank you Mr Pierre. you have all my respect.
Dear Mr. Pierre,
I am a research student working on Battery Energy Storage System operation optimisation. I noticed that the Ausgrid dataset is no longer publicly accessible. I am very keen to use this dataset to test some of my prototype models.
I tried downloading it through SiteCore Cloud but was unsuccessful. Would it be possible to obtain access to the dataset for my research?
I would greatly appreciate any assistance you can provide.
Thank you very much for your time and support.
Best regards,
Cao
Good point, it is no longer available on Ausgrid website. No idea why. I've udpated the post with a self-hosted download link to a copy of the dataset https://pierreh.eu/downloads/Ausgrid_solar_home_data.zip. Since the dataset was made available under an open license, I believe it is fine.
Thank you so much, Mr. Pierre. I really appreciate it. Much respect to you.