PNNL

Abstract

As renewable energy continues its rapid expansion in the Unites States, multi-decadal hourly datasets of electricity production are needed to asses reliability and resource adequacy of power grids. We present a dataset containing 43 years of plant-level wind and solar power production data. The dataset is designed to be aggregated to appropriate scales of interest for bulk system studies such as Balancing Authorities (BAs), states, and nodes of a production cost model. The dataset covers every plant in the contiguous U.S. that is reported in the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) Form 860 as of 2020. The data is validated against two publicly available datasets at the BA-level for its ability to capture infrastructure growth over time, seasonal, and diurnal cycles. This coincident multi-decadal historical dataset provides a documented and evaluated multi-resource baseline for studies on reliability, resource adequacy, climate change impacts, and characterization of emergent climate threats on renewable resources.