Decrease reporting lag to several months

[grgmiller]

Although final, validated EIA form data is typically not available until the autumn following the end of each year, the EIA does publish preliminary, monthly files on only a several month lag. According to Schively et al 2018, these monthly files (in 2015) represented 91% of capacity and 95% of generation nationwide. Likewise, hourly data from CEMS is available on a several-month delay.

I'm wondering if we could use this preliminary data to release preliminary hourly results on only a several month lag. If so, this would have the following implications:

• we would need to publish a new data release every quarter (or maybe every month depending on the data lag)
• We would want to clearly indicate which data is final and which is preliminary. We would probably not want to recommend the preliminary data for data validation
• If one of the points of this dataset is that it is comprehensive, would we even want to publish early versions of the dataset that are incomplete? Would there be value to the data users to have such data?
• Would we need a separate pipeline that can work with the early-release/preliminary data?

This would be facilitated if PUDL also integrated monthly data into their pipeline. I know that they have been talking about it, but I don't know what the status is.