DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13948477
title: Solar and Wind Energy Drought Data for 15 BAs in the CONUS

description: 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.