# Northern Powergrid

> Northern Powergrid is the electricity distribution network operator (DNO) for the North East of England, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire — poles, wires, substations and low-voltage network delivering power to 4 million homes and businesses across roughly 10,000 square miles. A Berkshire Hathaway Energy company. It does not sell electricity, it moves it, so it holds no retail accounts and no billing relationship. Its public API surface is entirely an open data programme: an Opendatasoft-hosted portal publishing 102 datasets under the Northern Powergrid Open Data Licence v1.0, served through a documented read-only REST API that answers anonymously at 5,000 requests a day.

Generated by API Evangelist (https://apievangelist.com) from the provider's published artifacts and live probes on 2026-07-27. No /llms.txt is published by the provider (probed: 404 on the portal host, 403 geo-block on the corporate host).

## What this API is

The API is the standard Opendatasoft Explore API v2.1 over Northern Powergrid's catalogue. Read-only, GET-only, JSON-only, sixteen operations, all driven by one query language (ODSQL). There is no write path, no webhook or event surface, and no MCP server. Anonymous access is real and unmetered beyond a daily count; a free portal account raises the allowance and unlocks the roughly 44 of 102 datasets that are metadata-visible but records-gated to anonymous callers.

Base URL: https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/api/explore/v2.1

The open data programme exists because Ofgem's Data Best Practice Guidance is a licence condition under the RIIO-ED2 price control — and unlike much of the sector it is visibly implemented rather than merely claimed. Britain has no energy consumer data right equivalent to the Australian CDR, and a DNO would not be the obligated party if it did, which is why there is no consumer-facing API here at all.

## APIs

- [Northern Powergrid Open Data Explore API (v2.1)](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/api/explore/v2.1/console): current version, stable and production ready. 16 operations over catalog search, dataset metadata, facets, records, attachments, DCAT-AP catalogue export and per-dataset exports to CSV, Parquet, GeoJSON and GPX.
- [Northern Powergrid Open Data Explore API v2.0](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/api/explore/v2.0/console): previous major version, still served, still publishing its own OpenAPI. Responses carry the ODS-Explore-API-Deprecation header.
- [Northern Powergrid Open Data Search API v1](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/api/v1/console): the original Search API, still live, still consoled. No OpenAPI is published for this generation.

## Specs

- [OpenAPI 3.0.3 — Explore API v2.1](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/api/explore/v2.1/swagger.json)
- [OpenAPI 3.0.3 — Explore API v2.0](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/api/explore/v2.0/swagger.json)
- [DCAT-AP catalogue export (RDF/XML)](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/api/explore/v2.1/catalog/exports/dcat): the whole 102-dataset catalogue as linked open data.

## Docs

- [Portal](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/)
- [Tutorial hub](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/pages/tutorial_page/)
- [Explore API reference](https://help.huwise.com/apis/ods-explore-v2/)
- [ODSQL query language reference](https://help.huwise.com/apis/ods-explore-v2/#section/Opendatasoft-Query-Language-(ODSQL))
- [Interactive API console](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/api-console/explore/v2.1/)
- [Open Data Licence v1.0](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/p/opendatalicence/)
- [Data roadmap](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/explore/dataset/data-roadmap/information/)
- [Register (free)](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/signup/)
- [Contact](https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/pages/contactform/)

## Getting started

No credential needed. One call proves the whole surface:

    curl 'https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/api/explore/v2.1/catalog/datasets?limit=1&select=dataset_id'

Then orient by theme before reading any dataset:

    curl 'https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/api/explore/v2.1/catalog/facets?facet=theme'

Then read live operational data:

    curl 'https://northernpowergrid.opendatasoft.com/api/explore/v2.1/catalog/datasets/live-power-cuts-data/records?limit=1'

## Rules for agents

- Every operation is a GET. Nothing can be mutated. Retries are unconditionally safe; the only cost of a retry is one unit of the daily quota.
- Resolve `dataset_id` with `getDatasets`, then read the dataset's `fields` array with `getDataset`, BEFORE composing any `where` or `select` clause. Per-dataset schemas are runtime data, not part of the OpenAPI contract.
- Paging: `limit` maxes at 100 without a `group_by` (offset+limit under 10,000), 20,000 with one. For anything bigger use the export endpoints, which have no cap.
- Quota: 5,000 requests/day anonymous, surfaced on every response as `X-RateLimit-Limit`/`-Remaining`/`-Reset`. On 429, back off to the reset timestamp — the window is daily, not per-second.
- Errors are `{error_code, message}`, not RFC 9457 problem+json. `ODSQLSyntaxError` names the failing clause and character offset; correct the query rather than retrying it.
- Watch the `ODS-Explore-API-Deprecation` response header for feature-level deprecation messages, and the `Link` header for the version changelog.
- Auth, when you need it: `Authorization: Apikey <key>` (preferred) or `?apikey=<key>`. OAuth 2.0 authorization-code is also supported, with exactly one scope: `all`.

## Artifacts

Machine-readable artifacts maintained by API Evangelist for this provider, at https://github.com/api-evangelist/northern-powergrid:

- `openapi/` — both published OpenAPI documents, saved verbatim
- `authentication/`, `scopes/` — the auth model including the OAuth 2.0 flow the OpenAPI omits
- `conventions/` — ODSQL, pagination, error envelope, rate-limit signalling, versioning
- `errors/` — the error catalogue, derived from the spec and live responses
- `rate-limits/` — observed quota headers
- `lifecycle/`, `changelog/` — versioning and deprecation policy, v2.1 change list
- `conformance/` — standards conformance including DCAT-AP and Ofgem Data Best Practice
- `data-model/` — the catalog/dataset/record entity graph
- `examples/` — real captured request/response pairs
- `mcp/` — a candidate MCP tool set derived from the real operationIds, plus the crosswalk
- `skills/` — packaged agent skills grounded in real operationIds
- `sandbox/`, `packages/`, `components/`, `well-known/`, `security/`, `agentic-access/`