PUDL v2026.9.0 is out; FERC EQR 2026Q2 refreshed

[zaneselvans]

This is a regular monthly PUDL data release, primarily motivated by updating the EIA-860M monthly data through August 2026.

The biggest change this month is that we’ve started publishing a DuckDB version of the PUDL database!

⚠️ We will be deprecating the old pudl.sqlite database output in January, 2027. ⚠️

This release closed a gap where Pandera’s Polars backend was silently skipping some of the schema validation checks declared in our metadata (thankfully they were being enforced independently elsewhere!). We’ve added several new tables (EIA-176 company characteristics, EIA-923 fuel stocks and energy storage, PHMSA distribution mains by install decade), and extended the new CEMS-derived operational characteristics analysis back to 2000. See the full release notes for more details, and the linked PRs and issues for the full story.

Separate from PUDL we also refreshed our FERC EQR dataset in the first week of September, which filled in some late filings that weren't included in the big 2026Q2 data drop.

• PUDL v2026.9.0 Data Access
• Long-term archive on Zenodo
• v2026.9.0 Changelog on GitHub

New contributors

Also welcome to our newest open source contributors!

• @lazizbekravshanov made their first contribution in Integrate EIA-923 fuel stocks: report_year extract fix + transform (part of #5081) #5431
• @giovannicozzolongo made their first contribution in Add EIA-923 energy storage outputs #5489