Hourly Solar and Wind Generation for U.S. Balancing Authorities, 2007-2020

CONUS hourly generation time series for each Balancing Authority, representing installed capacity from 2007 through 2020. The data contains simulated actual generation aggregated from plant-level data in the EIA database, with monthly plant inventories and BA-level hourly generation files. It was created by Allison Campbell of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, referencing methods from Campbell et al. 2023 and Bracken et al. 2023.

Use Cases

• Modeling grid integration of renewables based on hourly BA-level generation time series.
• Analyzing historical capacity factors for solar and wind plants based on simulated actual generation profiles.
• Studying the evolution of balancing authority portfolios using monthly plant-level inventory data.
• Validating other generation datasets using the temporal baseline aligned with EIA 923 data.

Strengths

• Covers a 14-year time range from 2007 through 2020.
• Integrates data from authoritative EIA 860 and EIA 860m databases for plant inventory.
• Provides data at multiple granularities: plant-level, BA-level, and for specific resource types (solar and wind).

Limitations

• Data is simulated actual generation, not directly measured, based on applied capacity factor profiles.
• Row count and file sizes are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Energy Information Administration (EIA) database, aggregated and simulated by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Collection Method

Plant-level generation aggregated to Balancing Authority level, with installed capacities applied to hourly capacity factor profiles from Bracken et al. 2023.

Time Range

2007 through 2020

Geography

Contiguous United States (CONUS), at the Balancing Authority level.