Hourly Wind and Solar Generation Profiles for U.S. Plants, 1980-2022

Historical hourly time series of wind and solar generation profiles for every plant in the U.S. Energy Information Administration 2020 dataset, spanning 1980 through 2022. The data uses regional atmospheric climate model simulations and 2020 plant configurations across the contiguous U.S. This research was supported by the GODEEEP Investment at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Use Cases

• Perform reliability assessments based on historical hourly generation capacity factors.
• Evaluate technology innovation impacts using plant configuration data derived from EIA 860 2020 data.
• Understand sensitivity to historical inter-annual variability and seasonality mentioned in the description.
• Aggregate generation data to Balancing Authority (BA) scale for grid operations modeling.
• Benchmark future climate projections against this historical dataset.

Strengths

• Covers 43 years of historical data from 1980 to 2022.
• Includes generation profiles for every wind and solar plant in the EIA 2020 dataset for the contiguous U.S.
• Data is designed for aggregation to specific scales like Balancing Authorities or production cost model nodes.
• Generation is expressed as a capacity factor, enabling conversion to actual Megawatts using provided plant capacity.

Limitations

• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, derived from EIA 860 2020 data and regional atmospheric climate model simulations.

Collection Method

Model simulations using 2020 wind and solar power plant configurations.

Time Range

1980 through 2022

Geography

Contiguous United States (CONUS)