empirical datasets for solar and wind farms

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I.A.G....@bham.ac.uk

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Dec 17, 2021, 4:10:43 AM12/17/21
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Dear All, I hope everyone is doing well and looking forward to a festive break.
I'm starting to look for some datasets on the measured output from wind and solar farms,  and thought I would ask on whether there were some typical datasets that people would use for this.
The data would ideally have:
  • ½ hour data
  • A calendar year’s worth (or more)
  • From a high renewables productivity region, ie, Morocco, Chilli, Middle East, Portugal;
  • For wind and solar in broadly the same region, in the same calendar year
  • Measured rather than modelled
So, I'm wondering if any renewables developer has shared outout data at a solar farm, wind farm level for an area of the world with a higher solar insolation than the UK? Or whether this remains a commercially sensitive potential data ask of any developer.
If so - also wondering if this might be an area of open data discussion after a certain amount of time after real-time, e.g., after 2 years - the data should be open (just a thought).
I hope everyone has a great break
best wishes
Grant

Dr Grant Wilson

Lecturer, Energy Informatics Group

Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute

School of Chemical Engineering

College of Engineering & Physical Sciences

University of Birmingham

T: 0121 414 5383 |E: i.a.g....@bham.ac.uk | Room 150, Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham, B15 2TT


Jack Kelly

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Dec 17, 2021, 11:06:07 AM12/17/21
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Hi Grant!

PVOutput.org has data for a few thousand PV systems in the UK, at up to 5-minutely temporal resolution.  They also have data from other countries.  

Matteo De Felice

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Dec 18, 2021, 2:56:26 AM12/18/21
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You might also consider the entso-e transparency platform. They publish hourly data for the biggest generation unit since 2015. Their website is transparency.entsoe.eu but you can also find a snapshot of wind data here: https://zenodo.org/record/4682697#.Yb2S0xjTUzQ
Best regards,

Robbie Morrison

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Dec 18, 2021, 4:08:25 PM12/18/21
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How about the ENSPRESO online database but just for Europe:

  • Ruiz Castello, Pablo, Wouter Nijs, Dalius Tarvydas, Alessandra Sgobbi, Andreas Zucker, Roberto Pilli, Andrea Camia, Christian Thiel, Carsten Hoyer‑Klick, Francesco Dalla Longa, Tom Kober, Jake Badger, Patrick Volker, Berien Elbersen, Andre Brosowski, Daniela Thrän, and Klas Jonsson (13 June 2019). ENSPRESO — an open data, EU-28 wide, transparent and coherent database of wind, solar and biomass energy potentials — Online database. Brussels, Belgium: European Commission.

  • abstract: This collection contains datasets from ENSPRESO, an EU-28 wide, open dataset for energy models on renewable energy potentials, at national (NUTS0) and regional levels (NUTS2) for the 2010-2050 period. Within ENSPRESO, ENergy Systems Potential Renewable Energy SOurces, technical potentials are provided for wind, solar and biomass, based on coherent GIS-based land-restriction scenarios. For wind, resource evaluation also considers setback distances as well as high resolution geo-spatial wind speed data. For solar, potentials are derived from irradiation data and available area for solar applications. For biomass, agriculture, forestry and waste sectors are considered. The temporal resolution for wind and solar is both annual and year fractions (timeslices as used by JRC-EU-TIMES). ENSPRESO complements the EMHIRES collection, that provides meteorologically derived power time series at high temporal and spatial resolution. ENSPRESO can impact the results of any energy model by improving its analyses of the competition and complementarity of energy technologies.

Some of this material is future looking to 2050, which, in the absence of time travel, falls outside the scope of the original request.

with best wishes, Robbie

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jkle...@eng.ucsd.edu

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Dec 19, 2021, 12:00:42 AM12/19/21
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Hi Grant,
generally developers do not share such data as there is no incentive to do so, due to non-disclosure agreements, and the potential for penalties, e.g. if performance guarantees are missed. But operators have to report low temporal resolution data to some government entities in the US. 

The  ENTSO data referenced earlier sounds superior, but if you need data from other parts of the world the following data do not meet your temporal resolution requirement, but otherwise should hit all your points. The paper only covers solar data, but presumably the same data source should also have wind data:

Bolinger, M., J. Seel, D. Robson. 2019. Utility-Scale Solar: Empirical Trends in Project Technology, Cost, Performance, and PPA Pricing in the United States (2019 Edition). Berkeley, Calif.: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

And the following summary in Bolinger M, Gorman W, Millstein D, Jordan D. System-level performance and degradation of 21 GWDC of utility-scale PV plants in the United States. Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy. 2020 Jul 7;12(4):043501
"Net generation data for each project are used to calculate historical capacity factors, and are compiled from a variety of sources, each offering different temporal resolution and plant coverage: Form EIA-923 (monthly), FERC Form 1 (annual), FERC Electric Quarterly Reports (quarterly, monthly, daily, hourly, or even sub-hourly, depending on the filer), and the California Energy Commission (annual). We generally default to using Form EIA-923 data—due to its nationwide coverage of all plants >1 MWAC."

I have not used these data myself; please consult Mark Bolinger for details.
cheers
jan

Jan Kleissl
Director, Center for Energy Research
Co-Director, Study Abroad
Deputy Editor, Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy
Professor, Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
University of California, San Diego
cer.ucsd.edu | o 858-534-8087 | c 619-376-3971

Robbie Morrison

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Dec 19, 2021, 4:56:43 AM12/19/21
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The documents Jan recently mentioned with URLs:

with best wishes, Robbie

Berit Müller

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Dec 19, 2021, 6:11:04 PM12/19/21
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Dear Grant,

A little hint from Germany: we once bought a very big solar data-set from SMA. As they have a monitoring system that they sell with their inverters, they have detailed data from all over the country which they sell (or at least sold some years ago) in an anonymised version.

Best regards

Berit

Tony Castillo Calzadilla

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Jan 10, 2022, 6:20:02 AM1/10/22
to Matteo De Felice, openmod initiative
Dear OpenModellers,

I hope this email finds you well, this is aimed to look for any insights to find a more updated database of solar irradiance, since the one I am used to us is a bit outdated, PVGIS only has dates up to 2016, therefore I am testing my model using a PV performance which does not fit with changes produced by global warming.

I take advantage to wish you all the best in this new year.

Best wishes

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