Solar and Wind Energy Drought Data for 15 BAs in the CONUS

Solar and wind energy drought data for 15 BAs in the CONUS

This dataset has 2 components, (1) physically consistent wind, solar and load data for 15 Balancing Authorities (BAs) in the CONUS and (2) pre-computed BA-level energy droughts for a variety of time scales from 1 hour to 5 days. The generation and load data is aggregated from plant level data based on EIA-860 2020 infrastructure. 

For more information please refer to Bracken et al. 2023, Standardized Benchmark of Historical Compound Wind and Solar Energy Droughts Across the Continental United States, in prep, or refer to the Github repository https://github.com/GODEEEP/energy-droughts

Wind, solar and load data

The data is broken up with one csv file per time scale, the available time scales are 1-hour, 4-hour, 12-hour, 1-day, 2-day, 3-day, and 5-day. Each file has the following columns

ba - Abbreviated name for the BA 

year - The current year as an integer

period - A unique integer for the current time step

solar_gen_mwh - Aggregated solar generation in units of MWh

solar_capacity_mwh - Aggregated solar plant capacity expresed as MWh 

wind_gen_mwh - Aggregated wind generation in units of MWh

wind_capacity_mwh - Aggregated wind plant capacity expresed as MWh 

load_mwh - BA load in MWh

load_max_mwh - The maximum BA load over the entire historical period

datetime_utc - Time stamp for the current time step, in UTC, All time stamps are beginning of period. 

timezone - The predominant time zone for the BA

wind_cf - Wind capacity factor, wind_gen_mwh/wind_capacity_mwh

solar_cf - Solar capacity factor, wind_gen_mwh/wind_capacity_mwh 

load_cf - Load "capacity factor", expresed as a fraction of the maximum BA load, load_mwh/load_max_mwh 

Energy drought data

Several kinds of energy droughts are available

lws - Load, wind, and solar compound droughts defined using a moving 10th percentile threshold based on the week of the year

rl - Residual load (load minus wind and solar gen) droughts defined using a moving 10th percentile threshold based on the week of the year

solar - Solar only droughts defined using a moving 10th percentile threshold based on the week of the year

solar_fixed - Solar only droughts defined using a single 10th percentile threshold 

wind - Wind only droughts defined using a moving 10th percentile threshold based on the week of the year

wind_fixed - Wind only droughts defined using a single 10th percentile threshold 

ws - Wind only droughts defined using a moving 10th percentile threshold based on the week of the year

ws_fixed - Wind and solar droughts defined using a single 10th percentile threshold 

Each drought type and time scale is in a csv file with the following columns (not all columns are available for every drought type)

ba - Abbreviated name for the BA 

run_id - unique id for each drought event

datetime_utc - Date stamp for the start of the drought, in UTC

timezone - The predominant time zone for the BA

run_length - The length of a drought in time steps

run_length_days - The length of the drought in days

severity_ws - Drought severity for wind and solar droughts, computed using the compound drought magnitude metric

severity_lws - Drought severity load, wind, and solar droughts, computed using the compound drought magnitude metric

severity_mwh - Drought severity expressed as MWh

zero_prob - For solar, this value indicates if the timestep has zero probability of solar production, i.e. night time

year - The year of the timestep

month - The month of the timestep 

hour - The hour of the timestep 

wind_cf - Wind capacity factor for the drought

solar_cf - Solar capacity factor for the drought 

srepi_solar - Standardized renewable energy production index for solar

srepi_wind - Standardized renewable energy production index for wind

This research was supported by the Grid Operations, Decarbonization, Environmental and Energy Equity Platform (GODEEEP) Investment, under the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

PNNL is a multi-program national laboratory operated for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) by Battelle Memorial Institute under Contract No. DE-AC05-76RL01830.