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:

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.