Texture Has Launched Open Source U.S. Energy Registry

The CommonGrid project provides a community-edited database of national utility assets and infrastructure.

Updated on Sept. 25, 2026 in Utilities

Isometric editorial illustration of a metal high-voltage power transmission tower, representing national energy grid infrastructure. — Texture has launched CommonGrid, an open-source platform providing a community-verified registry of United States electrical utilities and transmission infrastructure. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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Do you believe making U.S. energy grid data open-source increases its overall accuracy?

Texture has released CommonGrid, an open source registry that aggregates detailed data on U.S. electric utilities, power plants, and transmission infrastructure. The project uses a community-moderation model to maintain accuracy across the nation's energy grid.

Why it matters

As the U.S. grid faces pressures from rapid electrification, AI power demand, and aging infrastructure, no single entity can track these shifts alone. CommonGrid attempts to solve this data gap by crowdsourcing information about grid assets and market pricing.

The registry encompasses seven ISOs and RTOs while offering public access to API requests ranging from 60 per hour without a key to 5,000 per hour with a free key. The project is licensed under the Open Database License 1.0.

The players

Texture

Texture is a New York City-based organization that funds and maintains the infrastructure for the CommonGrid project.

The details

CommonGrid functions as a relational database that includes a searchable map and a transparent contribution history. Users can submit edits, which are reviewed by an elected moderation team before being merged into the platform's hourly database snapshots.

September 25, 2026: Texture officially released the CommonGrid registry.

Market Landscape

This release shifts how energy data is managed by moving from proprietary silos to an open-source collaborative model. By adopting the Open Database License 1.0, the project forces a departure from industry-standard private database models toward transparent, shared utility mapping.

Researchers and industry stakeholders can now access free weekly database snapshots in SQL or GeoJSON for analysis. Consumers and local entities benefit from greater transparency regarding the grid infrastructure projects and pricing nodes in their regions.

The takeaway

CommonGrid demonstrates how decentralized data collection can address large-scale infrastructure challenges that are too complex for any single company to track. Stakeholders should review the platform's API documentation to integrate these grid assets into their own planning and research workflows.