EPA Data: For this project, we are collecting data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Acid Rain Program. They collect and make available via their web site, hourly emissions data for the largest U.S. fossil fuel power plants. These data include hourly sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon dioxide (CO2), and heat input values, which are measured at the individual power plants and stored in the Electronic Data Reporting format (EDR). Because these data are actually measured and not computed from past operational practices, they are suitably reliable for the MIDCARB project. The data for each participating state are downloaded, but only those data relevant to the project are extracted and stored in the local databases. For some datasets, only summary data, such as the monthly average, are stored.

EPA Data Preparation Instructions
Prepared by Nathan Eaton, Indiana Geological Survey, 812-855-0417
and Melissa Moore, Kansas Geological Survey, 785-864-2198

Recommended Directory Structure:
One issue you face very quickly in this process is where to put all of the files so you don't get confused. After a few false starts, we chose the structure below. It keeps the files grouped by type, raw vs. exploded, within year and quarter. That makes it is easy to see the filenames and to get counts of files to confirm that all the files were processed.

To Download the EPA Data:
Go to: http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/emissions/raw/index.html and follow the instructions. You will need to download their explode program. When you are downloading files, you can have a number of downloads going at once, instead of waiting for each download window to finish. The year and quarter are encoded in the URL so you can change the URL to move from quarter to quarter. Just be careful about the location of the output files; it is easy to make mistakes in the boredom of the download process.

To Explode (Uncompress) the EPA Data Files:
The EPA's explode.exe is a Windows Executable. Melissa Moore at the Kansas Geological Survey wrote an NT shell script, explodefiles.bat, to automate the exploding process. It will run all the files in a folder so it only has to be run once for each quarter's files, making it pretty painless. The explode.exe file, as well as the script, need to be saved locally. Change the file structure in the FOR loop to match what you have set up locally. In the comments in the file itself there is an explanation of how it works. Contact Melissa Moore if you have questions.

Documentation about the format of the raw EPA data files:
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/reporting/edr21/101/edrjan01.pdf
Starting with Quarter 2, 2000 there was a data format change: the Fuels, Units, and Facilities records were added to the EPA data. When you are loading the data into your database, remember that data from earlier quarters will not add records to the database Fuels, Units, and Facilities tables.

Data Processing to Load Your Database:
Once you have the raw (ASCII) data exploded, you are ready to import the data into your database. Nathan Eaton at the Indiana Geological Survey has written an EPA Data Extractor (updated 7-13-01). Just download this zip file, unzip it and follow the instructions in the document: EPA Data Extractor1.2.pdf. Contact Nathan Eaton if you have questions.

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