GODEEEP future energy drought data

NOTE: v1.1.0 of this dataset provides a new version of the ba-aggregated data in a new, more efficient format, the data is identical to v1.0.0.

Overview

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, C., Voisin, N., Mongird, K., Burleyson, C. D., & Oikonomou, K. (2025). Intensifying renewable energy droughts in the Western U.S. amid evolving infrastructure and climate. Earth's Future, 13, e2024EF005313. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EF005313

File format

All data files are stored as Apache Parquet (.parquet, zstd compressed). Read in R with arrow::read_parquet(path); in Python with pandas.read_parquet(path) or pyarrow.parquet.read_table(path).

File naming

ba-aggregted.zip extracts to ba-aggregated/: ba_{type}_{infra_year}_{scenario}_{period}.parquet, where - type is hist (future infrastructure × historical climate 1980-2019), future (future infrastructure × future climate 2020-2059), or expected_future (each 5-year future climate window paired with its matching infrastructure year) - infra_year ∈ {2020, 2025, 2030, 2035, 2040, 2045, 2050} (omitted for expected_future) - scenario is bau (business as usual) or nz (net zero) - period is hourly or daily

future-energy-droughts.zip extracts to droughts/: Please see v1.0.0 to download this file or click here to download it.

future-wind-solar.zip extracts to future-wind-solar/: Please see v1.0.0 to download this file or click here to download it (warning 22 GB!).

BA Aggregated wind and solar generation data 

File: future-energy-droughts.zip extracts to droughts/

Daily files have 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 within the year
• datetime_utc - Time stamp for the start of the period, in UTC
• solar_gen_mwh - Aggregated solar generation in units of MWh
• solar_capacity_mwh - Aggregated solar plant capacity expressed as MWh
• wind_gen_mwh - Aggregated wind generation in units of MWh
• wind_capacity_mwh - Aggregated wind plant capacity expressed as MWh
• load_mwh - BA load in MWh
• load_max_mwh - The maximum BA load over the entire historical period
• n_wind_plants - Number of wind plants aggregated for this BA
• n_solar_plants - Number of solar plants aggregated for this BA
• wind_cf - Wind capacity factor, wind_gen_mwh/wind_capacity_mwh
• solar_cf - Solar capacity factor, solar_gen_mwh/solar_capacity_mwh
• load_cf - Load “capacity factor”, expressed as a fraction of the maximum BA load, load_mwh/load_max_mwh

Hourly files contain the same physical quantities at hourly resolution and additionally include solar_gen_mw/wind_gen_mw (instantaneous power), solar_capacity/wind_capacity (capacity in MW), and the scenario and infra_year columns labeling the run.

Energy drought data

Please see v1.0.0 for a description of this data or click here to download it.

Plant level wind and solar generation data

Please see v1.0.0 for a description of this data or click here to download it (warning 22 GB!).

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.