Solar and wind increasingly shape prices, trading decisions and balancing requirements across Europe’s power markets. Yet the data needed to understand renewable generation is often spread across different sources, structures and time horizons.
For trading desks, analysts and teams managing power-system balance, renewable generation is no longer a peripheral input. When wind output rises across the North Sea or solar generation increases across Germany, market conditions can shift quickly. Understanding what is generating now, what is expected next and how previous forecasts performed has become an important part of managing market and imbalance risk.
The challenge is bringing all of that information into one consistent structure.
Current generation estimates may come from one source, forecasts from another and historical generation from somewhere else. Archived forecasts — particularly the exact forecast available at a given point in time — can be especially difficult to retrieve consistently for benchmarking and backtesting.
Regional Power Generation grew out of a real energy-trading requirement: a consistent market-level view of renewable generation combining current estimates, forward forecasts, several years of history and the archived forecasts required for meaningful backtesting.
Regional Power Generation serves a different purpose from the OpenWeather Energy Dashboard.
The Energy Dashboard focuses on individual renewable-energy installations and site-specific generation and operational conditions. Regional Power Generation takes a broader, market-level view, aggregating solar and wind generation across countries and regions. This allows traders, analysts and energy teams to understand not only what is happening at a particular asset, but what is happening across the wider renewable-generation landscape. The market-level perspective was one of the core requirements behind the product development.
One dataset, four core questions
Regional Power Generation is designed around four core questions energy teams need to answer:
- Analyse, or what happened before?
Historical solar and wind generation data is available from 2024 to the most recently completed day, providing a consistent basis for research, modelling and longer-term market analysis.
- Monitor, or what is happening now?
Current solar and wind generation estimates provide a market-level view of output across supported countries and regions.
- Forecast, or what happens next?
Solar and wind generation forecasts extend to Day +15, giving trading and planning teams a consistent forward view of expected renewable output.
- Validate, or what was the forecast at the time?
An archive of forecasts preserves the values issued at 00, 06, 12 and 18 UTC, with historical forecast data available from 2024. Realised generation can therefore be compared with the forecast that was actually available at the time.
For trading and analytical teams, the historical forecast archive can be particularly valuable. The historical generation tells you what ultimately happened. The archived forecast shows what information was available before it happened. Comparing the two enables teams to benchmark forecast performance, quantify differences between forecast rounds and backtest trading or operational strategies against the information they would actually have had at the time.
Regional Power Generation currently covers solar and wind generation across Germany, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
Estimated market coverage includes:
• Germany: approximately 98–100% of solar generation and 99–100% of wind generation, with national and north–south splits
• United Kingdom: approximately 90–97% of solar generation and more than 99% of wind generation, with national and England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland splits
• Republic of Ireland: the majority of solar generation and approximately 95–100% of wind generation at national level
Custom regional splits can also be provided on request.
Across the currently covered markets, the dataset represents roughly 250 GW of installed solar and wind capacity. Data can be aggregated at 15-minute, hourly or daily resolution, allowing teams to select the level of detail that best fits their trading, modelling and analytical workflows.
Data is delivered in structured CSV datasets designed for integration into trading platforms, analytical pipelines, dashboards and internal systems, with other delivery options available on request.
Building from a real market requirement shaped the product’s emphasis on flexibility. Markets, regional aggregation, forecast horizons and delivery requirements can be adapted to different commercial and technical workflows.
The underlying approach is also designed to support expansion into additional markets where sufficiently detailed and reliable generation and installation data is available.
We are currently considering further renewable-heavy European markets as potential future additions.