Downloads

If you would like to download the dataset from a specific journal publication, please refer to the publication-specific datasets section below.

The table below gives an overview of the most current Renewables.ninja pre-compiled datasets and available simulation model source code.

License for all data downloaded from this page:

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). More details on the license conditions.

If you wish to use the data for commercial purposes, please contact us.

Citation information:

Citation information is embedded in the downloads. For academic and professional use (presentations, journal articles, trade publications, etc) please make sure you cite the correct paper as indicated in the downloaded file.

Detailed information on datasets

PV

Hourly PV capacity factors for the EU-28 plus Norway and Switzerland, simulated with MERRA-2 and CM-SAF SARAH, as described in the following paper:

[1] Pfenninger, Stefan and Staffell, Iain (2016). Long-term patterns of European PV output using 30 years of validated hourly reanalysis and satellite data. Energy 114, pp. 1251-1265. doi: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.08.060

Version history

• v1.1: Extends v1.0 data to include 2015 and 2016 for MERRA-2, and 2015 for SARAH (June 2017) [Download]
• v1.0: Initial release (September 2016) [Download]
  

Wind

Hourly wind capacity factors for the EU-28 plus Norway and Switzerland, based on MERRA-2, simulating the present-day fleet of wind farms, the near-term future and long-term future fleets, as described in in the following paper:

[2] Staffell, Iain and Pfenninger, Stefan (2016). Using Bias-Corrected Reanalysis to Simulate Current and Future Wind Power Output. Energy 114, pp. 1224-1239. doi: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.08.068

Version history

• v1.1: Includes weather data from 1980-1984, 2015 and 2016, updated wind fleets, now based on MERRA-2 (June 2017) [Download]
• v1.0: Initial release based on MERRA-1 (September 2016) [Download]

Publication-specific datasets

Grams et al. 2017

This is the dataset used in: Christian M. Grams, Remo Beerli, Stefan Pfenninger, Iain Staffell and Heini Wernli (2017). Balancing Europe’s renewable electricity through spatial deployment informed by weather regimes. Nature Climate Change. doi: 10.1038/nclimate3338

Dataset contains country-aggregated hourly wind and PV capacity factor simulations for Europe, covering 1985 to 2016.

Note: these data are superseded by the v1.1 European datasets listed above.

[Download dataset]

Fattori et al. 2017

This is the dataset used in: Fabrizio Fattori, Norma Anglani, Iain Staffell and Stefan Pfenninger (2017). High Solar Photovoltaic Penetration in Absence of Substantial Wind Capacity: Storage Requirements and Effects on Capacity Adequacy. Energy doi: 10.1016/j.energy.2017.07.007

Dataset contains bias-corrected simulated PV generation for Lombardy and the NORD bidding zone in Northern Italy, using CM-SAF SARAH, covering 1986 to 2015 with hourly resolution.

[Download dataset]