Initiative description: 

Power grids around the world are adopting more variable renewable energy and battery storage systems. Given the unique attributes of solar and wind, it is important to understand how these systems perform under different weather conditions, and how power systems can be designed to maintain reliability under varying weather and when faced with other stress conditions. Through a collaboration with RMI, Tata Power, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Electric Power Research Institute, and Vaisala, GridLab is developing datasets and tools that can support power system planning for India. 

In the early phase of the project, working with Vaisala, we have developed granular (5 kilometre) weather datasets to enable wind and solar energy analysis for 10 years of weather conditions from 2015 to 2024 —using numerical weather prediction modeling for wind energy and satellite-based measurements for solar energy. These datasets have been processed by NREL into more usable formats for capacity expansion and production cost modeling through geospatial and techno-economic analysis tools such as the Renewable Energy Potential (reV) Model and System Advisor Model (SAM), assuming various wind and solar technology performance characteristics. 

Given the objective of this initiative, which is to enable access to useful datasets by a variety of modelers, these datasets are being made available to the public free of any GridLab charges. The datasets were described in a webinar hosted by GridLab on September 5. Links to the release webinar slides and video recording are below.

Description and Instructions: 

The raw datasets are being made available via the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-4.0) license. A sample of the Vaisala raw weather datasets (~80 GB) are available to the public by clicking the link below. The full set of Vaisala weather datasets can be accessed through the AWS URI, which is available via the link below. Given the high volume of these datasets (~20 TB), users are encouraged to explore the feasibility of how they will transfer, store, and process these datasets before downloading. Please note that while we are making the raw datasets available to the user free of GridLab charges, there is a fee that we incur from AWS when a user downloads the data, which is estimated at approximately $2000 for the full dataset. We are asking that the user cover these charges. Please note users will need an AWS account to access the full dataset. 

The processed datasets (utility-scale and distributed solar PV, onshore and offshore wind) include regional summaries (the technical potential capacity of the technology in a particular region), hourly profiles (8760 hourly capacity factors for the technology in a particular region), and supply curves (the average levelized cost of electricity of the technology in a particular region). These datasets are approximately 3 GB and can be accessed directly by clicking the tab below.