Hydropower dataset of hourly inflow values for European bidding zones for ACDC-ESM

Energy Climate dataset consistent with ENTSO-E Pan-European Climatic Database (PECD 2021.3) in CSV and netCDF format

TL;DR: this is a nationally aggregated hourly dataset for the capacity factors per unit installed capacity for storage hydropower plants and run-of-river hydropower plants in the European region. All the data is provided for 30 climatic years (1981-2010).

Method Description
The  hydro inflow data is based on historical river runoff reanalysis data simulated by the E-HYPE model. E-HYPE is a pan-European model developed by The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), which describes hydrological processes including flow paths at the subbasin level. E-hype only provides the time series of daily river runoff entering the inlet of each European subbasin over 1981-2010. To match the operational resolution of the dispatch model, we linearly downscale these time series to hourly. By summing up runoff associated with the inlet subbasins of each country, we also obtain the country-level river runoff.

The hydro inflow time series per country is defined as the normalized energy inflows (per unit installed capacity of hydropower) embodied in the country-level river runoff. A dispatch model can be used to decides whether the energy inflows are actually used for electricity generation, stored, or spilled (in case the storage reservoir is already full).

Data coverage
This dataset considers two types of hydropower plants, namely storage hydropower plant (STO) and run-of-river hydropower plant (ROR). Not all countries have both types of hydropower plants installed (see table). 

The countries and their acronyms for both technologies included in this dataset are:

Country
Run-of-River  
Storage

Austria
AT_ROR
AT_STO

Belgium
BE_ROR
BE_STO

Bulgaria
BG_ROR
BG_STO

Switzerland
CH_ROR
CH_STO

Cyprus
CZ_ROR
CZ_STO

Germany
DE_ROR
DE_STO

Denmark
DK_ROR

Estonia
EE_ROR

Greece
EL_ROR
EL_STO

Spain
ES_ROR
ES_STO

Finland
FI_ROR
FI_STO

France
FR_ROR
FR_STO

Great Britain
GB_ROR
GB_STO

Croatia
HR_ROR
HR_STO

Hungary
HU_ROR
HU_STO

Ireland
IE_ROR
IE_STO

Italy
IT_ROR
IT_STO

Luxembourg
LU_ROR

Latvia
LV_ROR

the Netherlands
NL_ROR

Norway
NO_ROR
NO_STO

Poland
PL_ROR
PL_STO

Portugal
PT_ROR
PT_STO

Romania
RO_ROR
RO_STO

Sweden
SE_ROR
SE_STO

Slovenia
SI_ROR
SI_STO

Slovakia
SK_ROR
SK_STO

Data structure description
The files is provided in CSV (.csv) format with a comma (,) as separator and double-quote mark (") as text indicator. The first row stores the column labels. The columns contain the following:

first column (or A) contains the row number

Label: unlabeled

Contents: interger range [1,262968]

second column (or B) contains the valid-time

Label: T1h

Contents represent time with text as [DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM])

column 3-52 (or C-AY) each contain the capacity factor for each valid combination of a country and hydropower plant type

Label: XX_YYY the two letter country code (XX) and the hydropower plant type (YYY) acronym for storage hydropower plant (STO) and run-of-river hydropower plant (ROR)

Contents represent the capacity factor as a floating value in the range [0,1], the decimal separator is a point (.).

DISCLAIMER: the content of this dataset has been created with the greatest possible care. However, we invite to use the original data for critical applications and studies.