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Resource adequacy, or ensuring that electricity supply reliably meets demand, is more challenging for wind- and solar-based electricity systems than fossil-fuel-based ones. Here, we investigate how the number of years of past weather data used in designing least-cost systems relying on wind, solar, and energy storage affects resource adequacy. We find that nearly 40 years of weather data are required to plan highly reliable systems (e.g., zero lost load over a decade). In comparison, this same adequacy could be attained with 15 years of weather data when additionally allowing traditional dispatchable generation to supply 5 % of electricity demand. We further observe that the marginal cost of improving resource adequacy increased as more years, and thus more weather variability, were considered for planning. Our results suggest that ensuring the reliability of wind- and solar-based systems will require using considerably more weather data in system planning than is the current practice. However, when considering the potential costs associated with unmet electricity demand, fewer planning years may suffice to balance costs against operational reliability.

This repository contains postprocessed results that are part of the paper "Identification of reliable locations for wind power generation through a global analysis of wind droughts" published in Communications Earth & Environment. The results are provided on a latitude-longitude grid, except where specified, and include: mean wind speed, annual mean wind speed, mean wind power density, annual mean wind power density, minumum annual mean wind power density, energy deficits for seasonal variability, energy deficits for weather variability, energy deficits for wind droughts, wind speed time series at Lat 53.00 Lon 3.00. Code and instructions required to reproduce these results are available in the GitHub repository at https://github.com/eantonini/Global_wind_droughts.