Quantifying Uncertainty in the Solar and Wind Energy Resource: A Global Perspective

Wind and solar energy production are playing an important role in weaning the world’s economies from non-renewable energy sources that contribute to environmental degradation. With growing concerns regarding climate change, energy resiliency, and global policy initiatives such as the Paris Accords (COP-21), a rapidly expanding fleet of utility-scale wind and solar power facilities and distributed generation of both resources is now being incorporated into the grid. Although solar and wind account for about 2% of global power production, renewable energy is the world’s fastest-growing energy source, increasing by 2.6% per year. Nearly 150 countries presently have renewable energy generation policy targets in place, generally ranging from 20% penetration by 2020 to 80% (or more ) of total power generation by 2050.

With the aggressive deployment of wind and solar energy facilities, the accuracy, and just as important, an accurate estimate of the uncertainty associated with resource assessment and plant performance is critical in maintaining the financial integrity in the renewable energy industry. More importantly, with deeper penetration of renewables, confidence in power production output on a spectrum of temporal and spatial scales is crucial to grid stability for planning and maintenance purposes. Here we use historical output from a diverse subset of Earth System Models (Climate Model Inter-comparison Project-Phase 5 members) combined with long-term surface and upper air data sets, to produce a global climatology of the wind and solar resource. We then present global seasonal and inter annual projected wind and solar power production and capacity factor trends and uncertainties.