A new set of data that will make it easier for power sector organisations to model and research extreme weather events in the UK has been made available to researchers.
The Adverse Weather Scenarios for Future Electricity Systems project offers access to meteorological data that covers periods of weather that currently prove challenging for highly-renewable UK and European electricity systems and will do so in the future.
The aim is to better model these events, to improve the ability to manage them and increase system resilience.
The dataset includes data regarding: long-duration winter wind droughts at times of peak load; summer wind droughts at a time of peak demand; and summer periods when there is surplus generation, largely from solar PV. The project has developed a set of indices that characterise these periods and used them to identify year-long datasets that include significant adverse events at various return periods. These are provided at various extreme levels (1 in 2, 5, 10, 20 ,50 and 100-year events) and for a range of climate change warming levels of 1.5°C, 2°C and 4°C global temperature rise. The datasets will be made freely available under OGL licensing conditions.
This project is a collaboration between the Met Office, the National Infrastructure Commission and the Climate Change Committee. It is likely to be tested by teams taking part in a five day virtual ‘hackathon’ on 21-25 June hosted by the Universities of Oxford and Reading and the UK Met Office. The goal of the hackathon is to produce novel solutions for understanding and quantifying climate risks in future energy systems.
The Met Office is also working on further datasets, including on short duration weather events.
Explore the dataset here