CERFRES: High-Resolution European Renewable Energy Generation Dataset

CERFRES (CERRA-derived Farm-level Renewable Energy Systems generation for Europe) is a high-resolution, open-access dataset of weather-driven wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation across Europe. The dataset provides hourly generation time series for the period 1995–2025 at multiple spatial scales, including individual installations (farm-level), reanalysis grid cells (5.5 × 5.5 km), bidding zones, and national aggregates.

The dataset is constructed by combining geospatial generator metadata with high-resolution meteorological input from the Copernicus European Regional ReAnalysis (CERRA). Wind and PV generation are simulated using physically based power-conversion models. Individual installations are mapped to the underlying meteorological grid based on geographic coordinates. The code used to produce this dataset is available at  https://github.com/EmilBruvik/CERFRES.

Two scenarios are provided:

• As-built scenario: Reconstructed historical fleet based on commissioning-year metadata, representing the gradual deployment of renewable capacity over time.
• Fixed reference scenario: Applies the full 2025 installed fleet across the entire historical period to enable consistent long-term variability analysis.

Structure

The dataset is distributed as a ZIP archive containing the following subdirectories:

• country-aggregated-production/
• per-farm-production/
• correction_factors/

Country-aggregated production

The country-aggregated-production directory contains hourly time series of wind and PV generation aggregated at country and bidding-zone level.

Each file is stored in NetCDF format and follows a consistent structure:

Dimensions

• time (8760): hourly timestamps for a full year
• area (47): countries and bidding zones

Coordinates

• time: hourly timestamps (UTC)
• area: area names (e.g., “Germany (DE)”, “DK1”, “NO2”)

Variables

• pv_power_mw (time, area)
  Hourly PV generation for the as-built scenario 
• pv_power_mw_2025 (time, area)
  Hourly PV generation for the fixed 2025 fleet scenario 
• wind_power_mw (time, area)
  Hourly wind generation for the as-built scenario 
• wind_power_mw_2025 (time, area)
  Hourly wind generation for the fixed 2025 fleet scenario 

Per-farm (grid-level) production

The per-farm-production directory contains spatially explicit generation data on the underlying CERRA grid.

Each file is stored as an xarray.Dataset with the following structure:

Dimensions

• time (8760): hourly timestamps
• y, x (1069 × 1069): spatial grid indices

Coordinates

• latitude (y, x)
• longitude (y, x)

Variables

• wind_power_mw_onshore (time, y, x)
  Onshore wind generation per grid cell
• wind_power_mw_offshore (time, y, x)
  Offshore wind generation per grid cell
• pv_power_mw (time, y, x)
  Utility-scale PV generation
• pv_power_mw_distributed (time, y, x)
  Distributed PV generation (rooftop and small-scale systems)

Correction factors

The correction_factors directory contains CSV files with monthly multiplicative bias-correction factors for each area and technology.

Structure

• Area: country or bidding zone
• PV_Factor: multiplicative factor for PV generation
• Wind_Factor: multiplicative factor for wind generation

These factors are derived by comparing modeled generation with ENTSO-E reported data over the period 2015–2025.

Validation

The validation directory contains the third-party data extracts used to produce the validation results reported in the paper (CERFRES vs. ENTSO-E, NVE, and Energinet observations). These are static snapshots of continuously updated source platforms.

Structure

• ENTSO-E/: ENTSO-E Transparency Platform generation-by-type exports (2014-2025)
• NVE/:  hourly wind production per Norwegian onshore farm (2002-2025)
• EnergiDataService_DK/:  hourly solar and wind generation per Danish region (2021-2025)
• GEM/:  3 CSVs, February 2026 release - Global Wind Power Tracker (1 - 10 MW and 10 MW+ wind farms) and Global Solar Power Tracker (distributed installations only).