A Multi-Decadal Hourly Coincident Wind and Solar Power Production Dataset for the Contiguous United States

Abstract

As renewable energy continues its rapid expansion in the Unites States, multi-decadal hourly datasets of electricity production are needed to asses reliability and resource adequacy of power grids. Recent years have seen the release of grid-cell-level simulated meteorological variables, however these are not extended to the power domain, are not developed from a dynamically consistent numerical weather model, and only cover a historical baseline of less than a decade. To fill this gap, this work provides a dataset of 43 years of coincident plant-level wind and solar power production data. The dataset is designed to be aggregated to appropriate scales of interest for bulk system studies such as Balancing Authorities (BAs), states, and nodes of a production cost model. The dataset covers every plant in the contiguous U.S. that is reported in the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Form 860 as of 2020. When compared with the EIA-923 monthly generation, we find minimal bias (less than 5%). When compared with BA-reported hourly generation, we find low bias in solar (less than 7%), and slight underdispersion in wind. This coincident multi-decadal historical dataset provides a documented and evaluated multi-resource baseline for studies on reliability, resource adequacy, climate change impacts, and characterization of emergent climate threats on renewable resources.