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.