SolarCostData Live

Methodology

How the live figures are sourced, derived, estimated and paused.

By SolarCostData Data Desk

This page explains where the numbers on The World Electricity Clock come from, how we label them, and what we do when a source misbehaves. The clock shows near-real-time electricity prices and generation from official grid sources. It is provisional data, not for trading or operational decisions.

Sources and licences

We publish only sources whose licence clearly allows commercial redistribution, and we show the required attribution on every page that uses them.

Market Source Licence basis
Great Britain Elexon, BMRS / Insights Solution BMRS data licence, copyright notice required
Denmark Energinet, Energi Data Service Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Australia (NEM) AEMO, NEMWEB AEMO general copyright permission, attribution required
Taiwan Taipower via data.gov.tw Open Government Data License, Taiwan v1.0
Exchange rates Frankfurter, ECB reference rates Free use of blended rates

Other grid operators are collected for research only and are not shown. The ENTSO-E Transparency Platform is not used.

Badges

Every number carries one of three badges. Metered means the value is taken directly from the operator’s published figure. Derived means we computed it from metered values: totals, sums, the renewable share, or a currency conversion. Estimated is reserved for values modelled beyond simple arithmetic. Carbon figures are Derived: metered generation multiplied by a published emission factor.

Interval conventions

Intervals differ by source, and we store every timestamp as the start of the interval in UTC.

Quality gates

We reject suspect values; we never clip them to a plausible number. A night-time solar reading is accepted up to the larger of 50 MW or 2 percent of installed capacity, and small negative solar values are plant auxiliary load and are shown as metered. A price is rejected only if it lies beyond twice the known cap or floor of its market. If more than 20 percent of critical zones, meaning those that carry a price or load, are stale, the page shows a stale band and the previous release stays in place. A metric whose newest point is older than three times its interval is shown as paused, with the last value and its time.

Demand

Great Britain demand is Elexon’s initial national demand outturn (INDO), published per half-hour settlement period and badged Metered. Taiwan demand is Taipower’s published current system load (台灣電力公司今日系統供需狀況), badged Metered. NEM regional demand is AEMO’s dispatch total demand, badged Metered.

Denmark publishes no near-real-time consumption field, so Danish demand is calculated by us and badged Derived. For each five-minute row of Energinet’s ElectricityProdex5MinRealtime dataset, per price area:

Exchange values are positive for imports into Denmark. The internal DK1–DK2 link (ExchangeGreatBelt) is excluded because it nets out inside Denmark, and the Bornholm link is excluded because it is already part of DK2’s Swedish exchange. Energinet’s dataset description lists exchange with Germany, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands; the Great Britain link (Viking Link) also appears in the data and is included, because leaving it out produced totals far above Energinet’s settled gross consumption, while including it matched that settled figure closely in our spot checks. Until Energinet documents this identity, the Danish demand figure stays Derived and this definition stands.

Records

A record is the most extreme value of its kind in our own data window for one market, described as “record since” the first date we hold, never as an all-time figure. A new extreme starts as provisional. It becomes confirmed when a second, independent reading supports it: for feeds that re-publish recent intervals (Elexon, Energi Data Service) a later batch fetched at least 15 minutes after the first must show the same value within 2%; for feeds that publish each interval only once (AEMO, Taipower) a later batch fetched at least 15 minutes afterwards must exist while the original value is still unrevised and unflagged. Each record page states which of the two confirmation bases applied. A record that is revised, flagged or not confirmed within 72 hours is retracted, and the retraction stays visible.

Record pages are not offered to search engines while a market’s data window is shorter than 90 days, because with only a few weeks of history almost any reading would be a record. After that, only confirmed records that beat a previous confirmed record can be indexed, at most three per day.

Currency conversion

Prices appear in local currency first. The dollar figure is Derived: we convert with the ECB reference rate from Frankfurter and show the rate date. Taiwan has no price in our feed, so there is no conversion.

Carbon estimate

The carbon figure uses lifecycle median factors from IPCC AR5 Working Group III, Annex III, in our table version v1 dated 23 October 2026. It is badged Derived (metered generation × published factor). Oil has no AR5 median, so 650 g/kWh is shown as a proxy. Denmark is excluded because its thermal output is not split by fuel. Fuels in the ‘other’ group are not counted, so the figure is a partial estimate rather than a measured intensity.

Revisions

Operators revise their data. A value shown now may change later, and we keep a revision history instead of overwriting silently. Editorial pages show a modified date only when their text changes.

What we do not do

We publish no forecasts and do not extrapolate or interpolate between readings; values hold until the next one arrives. We give no trading, investment or operational advice. If a source goes quiet we say so rather than guess.