Hourly onshore and offshore wind capacity factors derived from ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis: global, 1940 to present, at hourly resolution, refreshed every three months.
Hourly onshore and offshore wind capacity factors for anywhere on Earth, derived from ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis. The series runs from 1940 to the present at hourly resolution on ERA5's native ~31 km grid, and is refreshed every three months as the reanalysis extends toward real time. The result is a long, internally consistent baseline for capacity-expansion, dispatch and resource-assessment work: one weather record, one method, eight decades deep.
ERA5 reports wind at 10 m and 100 m. We use both heights to estimate the local wind shear and extrapolate the wind speed to a turbine's hub height, while correcting for air density derived from surface pressure and temperature. The hub-height wind speed is then converted to power through a manufacturer power curve, following the same cut-in, rated and cut-out behaviour a real turbine does, to give an hourly capacity factor. The output is a physically grounded estimate of what a representative turbine would have produced at that site, hour by hour, going back to 1940.
Explore and download these capacity factors through Convexity, Bayesian Energy's energy-system modelling application, free to use in the browser. An open API for programmatic access is coming soon.
Derived by Bayesian Energy from ERA5 reanalysis, produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use of the Copernicus information on which this derived product is based.
The capacity-factor dataset is released by Bayesian Energy under CC BY 4.0, free to use, including commercially, with attribution.
