DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8008034
title: Solar and Wind Energy Drought Data for 15 BAs in the CONUS

description: <strong>Solar and wind energy drought data for 15 BAs in the CONUS</strong> 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 <strong>Wind, solar and load data</strong> 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 <strong>Energy drought data</strong> Several kinds of energy droughts are available <strong>lws</strong> - Load, wind, and solar compound droughts defined using a moving 10th percentile threshold based on the week of the year <strong>rl</strong> - Residual load (load minus wind and solar gen) droughts defined using a moving 10th percentile threshold based on the week of the year <strong>solar</strong> - Solar only droughts defined using a moving 10th percentile threshold based on the week of the year <strong>solar_fixed</strong> - Solar only droughts defined using a single 10th percentile threshold <strong>wind</strong> - Wind only droughts defined using a moving 10th percentile threshold based on the week of the year <strong>wind_fixed</strong> - Wind only droughts defined using a single 10th percentile threshold <strong>ws</strong> - Wind only droughts defined using a moving 10th percentile threshold based on the week of the year <strong>ws_fixed</strong> - 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.