# National Grid Electricity Distribution

> National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED) is the licensed electricity distribution network operator for the Midlands, the South West of England and South Wales, delivering power to over 7.9 million customers across roughly 55,500 square kilometres. Its developer surface is the Connected Data Portal — a live CKAN 2.9.8 instance at connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk carrying 92 datasets and 8,691 resources under a licence derived from the Open Government Licence v3.0, with a documented public CKAN Action API and DCAT catalogue exports in JSON-LD, Turtle, N3 and RDF/XML.

Generated by API Evangelist on 2026-07-27 from apis.yml and this repository's artifacts. NGED publishes no llms.txt of its own (/llms.txt returns 404 on the portal host).

## What an agent can and cannot get here

- The full data catalogue is queryable with **no credential at all**: package_search, package_list, package_show, group_list, group_show, tag_list, tag_show, organization_list, license_list, status_show and help_show all return HTTP 200 anonymously.
- **778 of 8,691 resource payloads** download anonymously. The other 7,913 return the literal string `redacted` in place of their URL and need a free, self-serve, email-verified account plus a self-issued API token.
- There is **no consumer data here and never will be**. NGED is a poles-and-wires distributor; UK household smart-meter data flows through the licensed Smart DCC monopoly and the retail suppliers. The only smart-meter data NGED publishes is aggregated at LV feeder and secondary substation level, published because Ofgem's Data Best Practice Guidance is a licence condition on every DNO.
- There is **no OpenAPI, no AsyncAPI, no GraphQL, no MCP server and no Postman collection**. The only interface description is CKAN's live `help_show` docstring endpoint.

## APIs

- [NGED Connected Data Portal API](https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/api-guidance): The public CKAN 2.9.8 Action API. Base URL `https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/api/3/action/`. RPC-over-HTTP, one action per path segment, JSON envelope `{help, success, result|error}`.
- [NGED Connected Data DCAT Catalogue](https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/): Machine-readable DCAT exports of the whole catalogue in four serialisations, served anonymously.

## Docs

- [API Guidance](https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/api-guidance): base URL, endpoint table, API token creation, Postman and cURL walkthroughs, Python 3.8 and cURL examples.
- [Registration and Subscriptions](https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/registration-and-subscription): how to get an account and a token; per-dataset email notification within 15 minutes of an update.
- [Help](https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/help): help hub, search syntax quick reference, Data Grid and Integrated Charts guides.
- [FAQs](https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/faq)
- [CKAN Action API reference](https://docs.ckan.org/en/latest/api/index.html): NGED delegates the full reference here.
- [About the portal](https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/about)
- [Case studies](https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/case-studies)
- [Digitalisation and data programme](https://commercial.nationalgrid.co.uk/digitalisation-and-data)

## Catalogue exports

- [catalog.jsonld](https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/catalog.jsonld) — DCAT in JSON-LD. Paged: hydra:PagedCollection, 10 datasets per page, 10 pages. Fetching page 1 alone gets you 10 of 92 datasets.
- [catalog.ttl](https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/catalog.ttl) — Turtle
- [catalog.rdf](https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/catalog.rdf) — RDF/XML
- [catalog.n3](https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/catalog.n3) — N3

## Example calls

- `GET https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/api/3/action/status_show`
- `GET https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/api/3/action/package_search?rows=100`
- `GET https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/api/3/action/package_show?id=aggregated-smart-meter-data-lv-feeder`
- `GET https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/api/3/action/group_show?id=demand`
- `GET https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/api/3/action/help_show?name=datastore_search`

## Authentication

Send a CKAN API token as the raw value of the `Authorization` header — no `Bearer` prefix. NGED's own example: `curl -H "Authorization: eyJ0eX..." https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/api/3/action/resource_show?id=<uuid>`. Tokens are created from the "API Tokens" tab of your user profile and shown exactly once. There is no OAuth, no OIDC and no scoping.

## Handling errors

Branch on `body.success`, never on the HTTP status. The most common denial — `Access denied: Resource access restricted to registered users` — is returned with **HTTP 200**. Errors carry `error.__type`: `Not Found Error` (404), `Validation Error` (409), `Authorization Error` (403 or 200). Unknown actions and wrong HTTP methods return a bare JSON string with status 400, not the envelope.

## Data groups

connection · demand · flexibility · innovation · system-and-network · system-planning

## Notable datasets

- Live Power Cuts (identifier PCD, Near Real Time, Open) — the documented alternative to the undocumented `/__powercuts/*` AJAX endpoints.
- Live Data — East Midlands / West Midlands / South Wales primary substation measurements (Near Real Time).
- Aggregated Smart Meter Data (LV Feeder) and (Secondary Substation) — the two datasets that exist because of Ofgem's Data Best Practice licence condition, published from 28 February 2024.
- Embedded Capacity Register — NGED's contribution to the ENA Open Networks ECR, renamed under DCUSA change DCP 350, monthly, ≥50 kW.
- LTDS Common Information Model — stage two of NGED's transition to publishing the Long Term Development Statement in CIM format under Ofgem's LTDS Reform.
- Connection Queue — Gate 2 sites under Connections Reform, with ANM status for curtailment calculation.

## Licence

- [NGED Open Data Licence](https://www.nationalgrid.co.uk/open-data-licence) — December 2020, "based on the Open Government Licence v3.0". Worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, commercial reuse permitted. Attribution required: "Supported by NGED Open Data". Personal data is excluded from the grant.
- Read the per-dataset `rights` field, not `license_id` — only 19 of 92 datasets populate `license_id`.

## Crawler policy

robots.txt disallows `/api/` to crawlers, sets `Crawl-Delay 10`, and carries an extensive ai.robots.txt-derived AI bot blocklist. The API is open to callers and closed to crawlers — call it, do not crawl it.

## API Evangelist artifacts in this repository

- authentication/national-grid-electricity-distribution-authentication.yml
- conventions/national-grid-electricity-distribution-conventions.yml
- errors/national-grid-electricity-distribution-problem-types.yml
- conformance/national-grid-electricity-distribution-conformance.yml
- vocabulary/national-grid-electricity-distribution-vocabulary.yml
- data-model/national-grid-electricity-distribution-data-model.yml
- lifecycle/national-grid-electricity-distribution-lifecycle.yml
- mcp/national-grid-electricity-distribution-mcp.yml (candidate, not an NGED server)
- packages/national-grid-electricity-distribution-packages.yml
- security/national-grid-electricity-distribution-domain-security.yml
- well-known/national-grid-electricity-distribution-well-known.yml
- json-ld/national-grid-electricity-distribution-catalog.jsonld

## Contact

nged.data@nationalgrid.co.uk · https://connecteddata.nationalgrid.co.uk/contact