electricmaps-contrib is the open-source Python repository of parsers that collect and standardize electricity production, exchange, and price data from around the world, built for contributors, developers, and analysts who want transparent electricity data or who want to extend the Electricity Maps platform. Note: the project name is electricitymaps-contrib.

What it is

electricitymaps-contrib is a community-maintained collection of parsers that fetch raw electricity data and turn it into a standardized form. The project describes its aim as providing a free, open-source, and transparent way to collect electricity data, and it deliberately restricts itself to public, free, and official sources — government bodies, transmission system operators (TSOs), producers, and online OpenData platforms where those exist. It is written in Python, lives in the Data & Analytics / Business Intelligence & Reporting category, and is licensed under AGPL-3.0. The standardized output is what powers the Electricity Maps platform, including the project's flow-tracing algorithm, its estimation models, and its forecast engine.

The concrete problem it addresses is fragmentation. Electricity figures are published country by country, by different operators, in different formats, and normally have to be gathered and normalized by hand before anything can be done with them. This repository replaces that per-source manual collection with a shared set of parsers, one per region, that the community maintains together. Alongside the parsers, the project publishes a consumption-based accounting (CBA) methodology for carbon intensity: emissions are attributed to what a country consumes rather than to what it produces, so responsibility is not shifted by exporting dirty production. The README also explains why the project does not publish emissions per capita, arguing that the metric can be distorted by relocating industry abroad.

Key capabilities

• Parsers that collect and standardize electricity production, exchanges, and price data across the globe.
• Data sourcing limited to public, free, and official providers, including governments and transmission system operators.
• Feeds the Electricity Maps platform, which includes the flow-tracing algorithm, estimation models, and forecast engine.
• Consumption-based accounting (CBA) carbon intensity, attributing emissions to consumers rather than producers.
• Region capacity data, which contributors are invited to update as the grid changes.
• Community workflows for adding parsers for new countries, fixing broken parsers, improving data-source accuracy, and discussing new potential sources.
• Consumer access through the web app at app.electricitymaps.com and mobile apps on Google Play (com.tmrow.electricitymap) and the App Store (id1224594248).

Who uses it and how

• Contributors adding a parser for a country that has no coverage yet, working against the guidelines in CONTRIBUTING.md.
• Maintainers repairing parsers when an official source changes its format or endpoint, since broken parsers are explicitly listed as a recurring need.
• Participants in Hacktoberfest and similar community drives, given the repository carries the hacktoberfest topic and accepts contributions from anyone.
• Researchers, journalists, and developers who need standardized grid data and either read the app or build on the published output.
• Companies that need the data commercially, routed through the project's commercial website rather than the open repository.

Getting started

The README does not name a single install command; it points contributors to the contribution guidelines in CONTRIBUTING.md and to the GitHub Wiki, which holds the guides for setting up the development environment.

How it compares

No list of paid products that this project replaces is provided in the facts, and no comparable tools are named, so this project stands alone in this registry on the evidence available.

When to use it — and when not

Choose it when the goal is transparent, source-attributed electricity data and willingness to work in a Python parser codebase under a community contribution process. Avoid it if AGPL-3.0 copyleft is incompatible with the intended product, or if production-grade uptime is needed without operating the parsing stack and its data sources. Note also the split licensing history: contributions made before commit cb9664f were licensed under MIT, while the repository has been AGPL-3.0 since v1.5.0, and the repository carries 125 open issues.