Wind and Solar Power Production Dataset for the Contiguous United States

The dataset provides 43 years of hourly, coincident wind and solar power production estimates for every wind and solar plant in the contiguous United States listed in the Energy Information Administration’s 2020 plant database. It addresses a gap in power-system planning: observed renewable generation covers only a short period, while many existing simulated datasets are brief, do not model power output directly, or fail to represent the weather consistently across time. The dataset uses regional climate simulations to generate historical power profiles for today’s plant fleet, incorporating plant-specific equipment and configurations rather than relying on a single generic technology. Its plant-level records can be aggregated to balancing authorities, states, or production-cost-model nodes.

The authors argue that long, consistent records are essential because wind and solar output varies across hours, seasons, and regions, and climate change may alter the weather resources these technologies depend on. These variations affect grid reliability and the ability to balance generation and demand, especially during prolonged renewable-resource shortages. Validation against monthly EIA generation data found less than 5% bias; comparisons with balancing-authority hourly records showed less than 7% bias for solar, while wind estimates were slightly underdispersed. The evaluated dataset is intended to support reliability and resource-adequacy studies, analysis of historical variability and extreme events, and assessments of climate impacts and technology changes.