Owner data doesn't join well with Legal Entity Identifier database (GLEIF) #24
Description
The GLEIF database (https://www.gleif.org/en/lei-data/gleif-golden-copy) maps corporate names to legal entity identifiers, which allows one to connect power plant ownership information to financial instruments such as stocks and bonds.
Examples:
PG&E Operates several power plants in California. The WRI Power Plant Database lists the owner as "Pacific Gas & Electric Co." But in the GLEIF database this company is listed as "PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY". Humans see these as the same, but matching up 30,000 ownership records is a lot of work to maintain.
A solution would be to add an LEI field for owners that have LEI data (PG&E's LEI is 1HNPXZSMMB7HMBMVBS46 as can be seen here: https://search.gleif.org/#/record/1HNPXZSMMB7HMBMVBS46). The LEI data then connects to 274 ISINs (unique financial instruments), which can then feed financial models.
The alternative is to build a mapping table from WRI owner names to LEIs as a stand-alone table that needs to be maintained separately. But if you added an LEI field, contributors could populate those fields all in one place.
LEI data has the benefit that it can also connect into the "who owns whom" hierarchy, so if people are looking to see who ultimately holds the paper for a given power plant, LEIs can be very powerful.