# Bonneville Power Administration

> BPA is a federal agency of the U.S. Department of Energy that markets wholesale
> electric power from federal hydroelectric projects in the Pacific Northwest and
> operates about three-quarters of the region's high-voltage transmission. Its public
> machine-readable surface is open data: an ArcGIS Hub catalog, a set of public ArcGIS
> REST feature layers, and plain-text operational feeds from the Balancing Authority.
> There is no API key, no sign-up and no developer program.

Generated by API Evangelist on 2026-09-06 from this provider's apis.yml and repository
artifacts. BPA publishes no llms.txt of its own (checked: https://www.bpa.gov/llms.txt
returned 404; https://data-bpagis.hub.arcgis.com/llms.txt returned 404).

## How to call it

- Authentication: none. Every endpoint below answers anonymous requests.
- Response format is chosen with the `f` query parameter, NOT the Accept header.
  `f=json` (ArcGIS JSON), `f=geojson` (RFC 7946), `f=pjson`, `f=html`.
- Errors arrive as `{"error":{"code":...,"message":...}}` inside an HTTP **200**.
  Parse the body for an `error` key; do not branch on the status code.
- Pagination is `resultOffset` + `resultRecordCount`; layers cap at 1000 features
  (2000 for transmission structures) and set `exceededTransferLimit` when truncated.
- Responses are `cache-control: public, max-age=30` with an ETag. Do not poll faster.
- The surface is read-only. Nothing here creates, changes or deletes anything.

## Machine-readable catalogs

- [DCAT-US 1.1 catalog](https://data-bpagis.hub.arcgis.com/data.json): 21 published
  datasets, publisher "Bonneville Power Administration", conformsTo Project Open Data
  v1.1. The authoritative index of what BPA considers published.
- [DCAT-AP 2.1.1 catalog](https://data-bpagis.hub.arcgis.com/api/feed/dcat-ap/2.1.1.json)
- [OGC API landing page](https://data-bpagis.hub.arcgis.com/api/search/v1)
- [OGC conformance declaration](https://data-bpagis.hub.arcgis.com/api/search/v1/conformance):
  OGC API Common 1 + 2, Features 1 (core, geojson, oas30), Records 1 (core, json).
- [Data Search API OpenAPI 3.0](https://data-bpagis.hub.arcgis.com/api/search/definition/?f=json):
  17 operations over the catalog.
- [ArcGIS REST service directory](https://services3.arcgis.com/Iz3chmSt4P7oOoZy/arcgis/rest/services?f=json):
  173 FeatureServers in the BPA tenant, of which the 21 catalogued above are the
  supported ones.

## APIs

- [BPA Data Search API](https://data-bpagis.hub.arcgis.com/api/search/v1): OGC API
  Records search over the BPA open-data catalog. Collections, items, queryables,
  aggregations, and a GeoService projection of any collection.
- [BPA GIS Data Hub feature layers](https://services3.arcgis.com/Iz3chmSt4P7oOoZy/arcgis/rest):
  service area, publicly-owned / investor-owned / tribal customer boundaries,
  transmission lines, transmission structures, right-of-way corridors, Columbia River
  Basin. Each layer answers `/query` with where, outFields and f parameters.
- [BPA Balancing Authority load and VER generation](https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/wind/baltwg.txt):
  plain-text feed, 5-minute intervals, rolling 7 days. Total wind generation, total
  solar generation, net generation and BA load in MW.

## Layers and their key fields

- BPA_ServiceArea — geometry only.
- BPA_CustomerPublics — NAME, STATE, CAT, FULLNAME, BES_NUM.
- BPA_CustomerIOU — NAME, BES_NUM.
- BPA_CustomerTribal — Name, Website. (Note the lower-case field name; where-clause
  field names are case-sensitive and differ from the other customer layers.)
- BPA_TransmissionLines_View — XRefCd, OperatingLineNm, VoltageMeas.
- BPA_TransmissionStructure_View — StrcSerialNbr, OperatingLineNm, StrcSymbolCd, MileStrcKey.
- BPA_RightofWay_View — geometry only.
- ColumbiaRiverBasin — geometry only.

Transmission structures join to transmission lines on `OperatingLineNm`, by value on the
client. The server enforces no referential integrity and offers no relationship query.

## Human documentation

- [BPA GIS Data Hub](https://data-bpagis.hub.arcgis.com)
- [Transmission operations information](https://www.bpa.gov/energy-and-services/transmission/operations-information)
- [Balancing Authority wind and solar data](https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/)
- [About BPA](https://www.bpa.gov/about/)
- [Contact BPA](https://www.bpa.gov/about/who-we-are/contact-form)
- [Privacy policy](https://www.bpa.gov/about/who-we-are/privacy)
- [DOE vulnerability disclosure policy](https://www.energy.gov/cio/articles/vulnerability-disclosure-policy)
- [News feed (RSS)](https://www.bpa.gov/rss-feeds/news-feed-no-cp)

## What BPA does not publish

- No API key, OAuth flow, sign-up or developer portal.
- No MCP server and no A2A agent card.
- No /.well-known/ documents on any BPA host — no security.txt, no api-catalog.
- No versioning or deprecation policy, no SLA, no API status page, no changelog.
- No SDK or CLI in any package registry.
- No webhooks, events or AsyncAPI.
- The OASIS node at http://www.oasis.oati.com/bpat/ (FERC Order 889) exists but is a
  registered-participant surface and does not answer anonymous clients.