GCRI · Energy Nexus
Renewables and storage
Wind and solar output follows the weather, so a power system built on them must plan for the hours, days and seasons when the weather does not cooperate. Storage, flexible demand, interconnection and dispatchable generation fill the gaps, each over a different duration. This page sets out how weather variability becomes a system risk, how storage technologies differ, and what evidence planners, operators and regulators use to size flexibility.
Renewables and storage on the record.
Renewables and storage: how the risk develops.
Storage technologies and weather variability. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Weather sets the supply
Wind output varies with pressure systems over days, and solar with cloud, season and latitude. Long, calm, overcast spells in winter, sometimes called dark doldrums, are the stress case that planners size firm capacity and storage against.
Correlation across sites
Plants spread over a large area smooth each other only when their weather is uncorrelated. A persistent high-pressure system can suppress wind across several countries at once, so interconnection helps less than geography alone suggests.
Storage by duration
Batteries shift energy over hours, pumped hydro over hours to days, and hydrogen or other long-duration options over weeks or seasons. Each duration answers a different gap, and no single technology answers all of them at acceptable cost.
Grid services change
Inverter-based plants provide no inertia unless designed and paid to. Fault ride-through, grid-forming control and fast frequency response decide whether a grid with a high share of renewables survives a disturbance.
Energy now in Europe.
Night lights, sunlight and population density over Europe, from NASA GIBS. Each layer carries its own date.
The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.
Layers 3
Energy now, for this page
About this layer
- Evidence
- Observed
- Source
- VIIRS Black Marble (VNP46A2) (NASA LAADS DAAC)
- Provider
- NASA LAADS DAAC
- Licence
- NASA open data
- Vintage
- daily; Satellite radiance, corrected for moonlight and atmosphere
- Newest at build
- 2026-10-12
- Resolution
- about 500 m grid
- Uncertainty
- Satellite night-time radiance for the date shown; lights are a proxy for electricity use and outages, not a measurement of supply or access.
- Reached through
- gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov, only after you allow the live map
About this layer
- Evidence
- Modelled (latest month GIBS publishes)
- Source
- MERRA-2 (NASA GMAO / GES DISC)
- Provider
- NASA GMAO / GES DISC
- Licence
- NASA open data
- Vintage
- monthly; Reanalysis model; latest month GIBS publishes
- Newest at build
- 2026-07-01
- Resolution
- about 2 km grid
- Uncertainty
- Reanalysis model estimate of monthly mean incoming sunlight over land; an indicator of solar resource, not a site yield assessment.
- Reached through
- gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov, only after you allow the live map
About this layer
- Evidence
- Estimated
- Source
- Gridded Population of the World v4.11 (NASA SEDAC (CIESIN, Columbia University))
- Provider
- NASA SEDAC (CIESIN, Columbia University)
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Vintage
- null; Census-based estimate, static (2020)
- Resolution
- about 1 km grid
- Uncertainty
- Census-based estimate of people per square kilometre in 2020, shown as exposure context; not a count of people affected by any hazard.
- Reached through
- gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov, only after you allow the live map
About this layer
- Evidence
- Observed
- Source
- VIIRS NOAA-20 corrected reflectance (NASA LANCE)
- Provider
- NASA LANCE
- Licence
- NASA open data
- Vintage
- daily; Satellite image
- Newest at build
- 2026-10-14
- Resolution
- about 250 m grid
- Uncertainty
- Satellite image. Satellite or model raster as the provider publishes it. Clouds, swath gaps and retrieval error leave gaps and noise; values are indicators, not measurements at a place.
- Reached through
- gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov, only after you allow the live map
About this layer
- Evidence
- Modelled (latest year GIBS publishes)
- Source
- MODIS Terra and Aqua land cover (MCD12Q1) (NASA LP DAAC)
- Provider
- NASA LP DAAC
- Licence
- NASA open data
- Vintage
- yearly; Satellite classification; latest year GIBS publishes
- Newest at build
- 2024-01-01
- Resolution
- about 500 m grid
- Uncertainty
- Satellite land cover classes for the year shown, including croplands; a classification with known errors, not a farm register.
- Reached through
- gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov, only after you allow the live map
About this layer
- Evidence
- Observed
- Source
- MODIS Terra (NASA LANCE)
- Provider
- NASA LANCE
- Licence
- NASA open data
- Vintage
- daily; Satellite retrieval
- Newest at build
- 2026-10-14
- Resolution
- about 2 km grid
- Uncertainty
- Satellite retrieval of the share of each cell covered by cloud during the day shown; not a solar output measurement.
- Reached through
- gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov, only after you allow the live map
Keyboard, with the map focused
Hold Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll to zoom
Latest available
NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
Loading the latest NASA imagery.
Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.
Energy now, framed on Europe.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date. They are indicators, not assessments of any place.
Data: NASA GIBS · ASTER GDEM · Blue Marble · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Natural Earth · NASA EONET · NASA/NOAA VIIRS · NASA JPL OPERA DIST-ALERTSources and licences
- We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- VIIRS Black Marble night-time lights, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; distributed by the NASA Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive and Distribution System (LAADS DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- MERRA-2 reanalysis, NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office; distributed by the NASA GES DISC; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University. 2018. Gridded Population of the World, Version 4 (GPWv4): Population Density, Revision 11. NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). doi:10.7927/H49C6VHW. CC BY 4.0
- VIIRS near-real-time products (flood, land surface temperature, snow cover, corrected reflectance), NASA LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- MODIS land products (vegetation indices, gross primary production, land cover), NASA LP DAAC and LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- MODIS and VIIRS atmosphere products, NASA LANCE and LAADS DAAC; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA (ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003, NASA LP DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). Cite as: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (2019). ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003. doi:10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003. NASA open data
- Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com. Public domain
- © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via NASA GIBS (coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). ODbL
- Blue Marble, NASA Earth Observatory; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- Context on the globe and flat map: coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names from NASA GIBS reference layers (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors); Blue Marble imagery as an optional base; 3D terrain and the elevation read-out from the ASTER GDEM elevation colour index (5 m to 200 m classes, exaggerated for legibility). Boundaries are drawn as published and imply no position on any territory.
- Live events: NASA Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET); events are indicative and keep their original source links.
- Observed (EO): NASA/NOAA VIIRS (Suomi NPP). We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
- Observed (EO): NASA JPL OPERA DIST-ALERT (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2026). We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
- NASA GIBS: We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
- Past year, daily temperature (ERA5 via Open-Meteo): Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
- Past year, daily temperature and sunshine (NASA POWER): These data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) POWER Project funded through the NASA Earth Science/Applied Science Program..
- Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (https://open-meteo.com/), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Optional layers (10 sources in the layer list: live, forecast, observed and context) print their provider credit on the map and here when switched on; forecasts are model output and derived indices are estimates.
Layers and dates
- Night-time lights, daily: VIIRS Black Marble (VNP46A2), NASA LAADS DAAC · 12 Oct 2026
- Incoming sunlight at the surface over land, monthly mean: MERRA-2, NASA GMAO / GES DISC · July 2026
- Population density, 2020: Population: CIESIN, Columbia University, Gridded Population of the World v4.11 (2018), NASA SEDAC, CC BY 4.0 · static
- True colour: VIIRS NOAA-20 corrected reflectance, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
- Land cover type (IGBP), yearly: MODIS Terra and Aqua land cover (MCD12Q1), NASA LP DAAC · 2024
- Daytime cloud fraction: MODIS Terra, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
Variable renewables tie the grid to weather, land and minerals.
| Domain | How it couples here | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Water | Solar and wind use little operational water; hydropower and pumped storage depend on it. See hydropower and water. | Pumped storage capacity and reservoir levels |
| Food | Ground-mounted solar and wind compete for or share land with agriculture. | Land use of new plants; agrivoltaic designs |
| Health | Battery fires and end-of-life waste carry local risks. | Battery incident reports; recycling rates |
| Biodiversity | Siting affects birds, bats and habitats; mining for minerals affects ecosystems elsewhere. | Siting assessments; mineral supply footprints |
Weather-driven generation is measured as capacity factor (energy produced over potential, as a fraction) and its variability over hours and seasons. Prolonged low-wind, low-sun periods are the planning case for storage and firm capacity. Capacity statistics come from IRENA’s annual Renewable Capacity Statistics and the IEA’s annual Renewables market report.
Dispatch and adequacy.
The screen a team would use to follow this subject: its measures, states and decisions. Names are examples and values are illustrative.
Dispatch and adequacy
Renewables and storage · Day ahead · Control area 2
Generation mix, day ahead
- Thermal
- Wind and solar
- Hydro
Margins
available vs required
Storage and flexibility
| ST-1 | Battery | 34 | 107 | Available |
| PH-2 | Pumped hydro | 88 | 269 | Available |
| DR-East | Demand response | n/a | 74 | Contracted |
Where renewable integration findings go.
Integration and adequacy studies are designed for the Foresight Outlook series, labelled as scenario or modelled evidence. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI) recommends no technology or vendor. Useful contributions: generation and weather time series for a region, storage performance records and siting conflict cases with sources.
Model renewables and storage as a system. Run the cascade.
Assembled from the Nexus Standards area profile Energy risk standards: the hazards it names, the systems and sectors that carry the loss, the controls that dampen it and the data that observe it. Choose the components, pick an initiating hazard and step through the cascade. The Map view places the run on an example geography with open data. Every coupling weight is a stated assumption you can change. A teaching model, not a forecast, an assessment or a certification. To model a place of your own choosing, open the full System Builder.
Hazards
- Heatwave
- Windstorm
- Widespread power outage (set off downstream)
- Large forest disturbance (set off downstream)
- Wildfire (set off downstream)
- Extreme fire weather (set off downstream)
- Heat-driven grid stress (set off downstream)
- Agricultural drought (set off downstream)
- Flash drought (set off downstream)
- Snow drought (set off downstream)
- Ground-level ozone episode (set off downstream)
- Meteorological drought (set off downstream)
- Extreme night-time heat (set off downstream)
- Lake and river heatwave (set off downstream)
- Cooling-water curtailment of power plants (set off downstream)
- Heat-induced track buckling (set off downstream)
- Shoreline ice shove (set off downstream)
- Seiche (set off downstream)
Systems and couplings
- Energy risk standards
- Water risk standards Common driver
- Critical infrastructure and critical entities Cascade
- Climate risk standards Feedback
- Space weather, spectrum and timing risk standards Common driver
Controls
NS-0Constitution and principlesNS-1The UNI and the artefact catalogue (grammar v0.2: domain, sector, region and environment segments)NS-3Risk record UNIs (grammar, legacy crosswalk, allocation authority)NS-9Contextual UNIs (deployments, instances, programme instances)NS-10Policies and clauses (machine-readable obligations: definition, binding, evaluation and enforcement)NS-11Verification and monitoring (evidence, attestations, zero-trust conformance observation)NRS-H84Hazard family: Energy system instability and shortfall (NHS-1 infra.energy)NRS-H61Hazard family: Cascading failure (NHS-1 sys.cascade)NRS-U8Universe platform profile: Energy NexusNRS-H48Hazard family: Utility and communication network outage (NHS-1 infra.utilities)NRS-H109Hazard family: Energy-transition technology failures (NHS-1 tech.energy-transition)NRS-H54Hazard family: Signal and platform disruption (NHS-1 cyber.platform)
Observation
- Global Power Plant Database (listed for reference)
- NASA Black Marble night-time lights (VNP46) (listed for reference)
- Ember electricity data (listed for reference)
- ENTSO-E Transparency Platform (listed for reference)
- EIA Open Data API (listed for reference)
- Proportion of population with access to electricity
- Renewable energy share in total final energy consumption
- Number of disruptions to basic services attributed to disasters
- Damage to critical infrastructure attributed to disasters
Example geography
- Europe: 113 hexagonal cells
- Surface air temperature, daytime (AIRS), NASA GIBS
- Rain rate, last half hour (IMERG), NASA GIBS
- Night lights tonight, outages (VIIRS Day/Night Band), NASA GIBS
- Vegetation disturbance alerts, 30 m (OPERA DIST-ALERT), NASA GIBS
What is measured, and how well.
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wind and solar capacity factor | percent of rated output | hourly and annual | Metered generation against installed capacity | OBSERVED |
| Residual load | megawatts | hourly | Demand minus variable generation | ESTIMATED |
| Low-generation spell duration | hours below a stated output threshold | per event | Reanalysis-driven generation models | MODELLED |
| Curtailed renewable energy | megawatt hours | monthly | Operator reports | REPORTED |
| Installed storage power and energy | megawatts; megawatt hours | quarterly | Capacity registers and statistics | Published statistics |
| Storage round-trip efficiency | percent | per asset | Metered charge and discharge | OBSERVED |
| Solar and wind resource | kilowatt hours per square metre; metres per second | long-term average | Resource atlases | MODELLED |
How renewables and storage is modelled, measured and tested.
The model, its assumptions, its data and its uncertainty, in the form a scientist or engineer would check. Structures follow published methods. The values drawn are illustrative, not findings.
System model
The couplings between the systems in renewables and storage: signs of influence, a reinforcing and a balancing loop, and cross-links where stress jumps.
Where the evidence comes from.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| IRENA renewable capacity and generation statistics (IRENASTAT) | Installed capacity and generation by technology and country | Free, attribution |
| Ember electricity data | Monthly and annual generation by source for many countries | Free and open, attribution |
| Global Solar Atlas and Global Wind Atlas (World Bank, ESMAP, DTU) | Long-term solar irradiation and wind resource maps | Free and open, attribution |
| ERA5 reanalysis (Copernicus) | Hourly wind, irradiance and temperature to build weather-driven generation series | Free and open, attribution |
| Copernicus Climate Change Service energy indicators | Climate-driven wind, solar and demand indicators for Europe | Free and open, attribution |
| Renewables.ninja | Simulated hourly wind and solar output for any location | Free for non-commercial use, attribution |
| DOE Global Energy Storage Database (Sandia) | Storage projects by technology, status and size | Public domain |
Who decides, and what the evidence serves.
Energy Nexus prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| System planners and transmission operators | How much firm and flexible capacity a high-renewable system needs, and of which duration | Multi-decade weather-year ensembles; low-generation spell catalogues |
| Energy regulators | How to design markets and grid codes that reward flexibility and grid-forming capability | Curtailment records, residual load profiles, grid code requirements |
| Ministries and development finance institutions | Which storage technologies to support and where | Storage scenarios by duration with costs, materials and safety stated |
| Fire services and local planning authorities | What battery storage sites require in permitting and emergency planning | Thermal-runaway evidence from published incidents and fire safety standards |
Outputs this topic produces
- Weather-year ensembles of wind, solar and demand for adequacy studies
- Low-generation spell catalogues with duration, season and spatial extent
- Storage and flexibility scenarios by duration class
- Technology briefs on storage safety, degradation and materials
What experts ask about variability and storage.
- How often, and for how long, do periods of low wind and low sunlight occur together across a region?
- Which mix of storage durations best covers hourly, daily, weekly and seasonal gaps?
- How will battery, pumped hydro and other storage behave when they are needed most, including after long idle periods or in extreme temperatures?
- What materials and supply chains do storage technologies depend on?
Variability, flexibility and storage physics.
Correlated output
Large weather systems affect many wind and solar sites at once. Geographic spread reduces but does not remove correlation.
Power versus energy
Storage has a power rating and an energy capacity. Short-duration batteries handle fast balancing; long gaps need much larger energy stores.
Degradation and safety
Battery cells age with cycling and temperature, and thermal runaway is a known hazard that design and siting must address.
How variability and storage are studied.
- 01
Reanalysis weather data
Decades of reconstructed weather allow simulation of wind and solar output over many years. Reanalysis smooths local extremes and may misrepresent future climate.
- 02
Capacity expansion models
Optimisation models choose least-cost mixes of generation and storage. Results are sensitive to cost assumptions and to how many weather years are included.
- 03
Electrochemical testing
Laboratory and field data on cell ageing and failure, grounded in materials science and chemistry. Field data on large installations is still accumulating.
- 04
Probabilistic adequacy
Tests whether a given mix meets demand through rare weather sequences. The rarest events are, by nature, the least well sampled.
How it is studied, and what the methods cannot say.
- 01Energy generation, storage and grid technologyWeather-driven generation profiles · Storage technology comparisonApplied here
- 02Forecasting and time-series analysisLoad forecasting with weather · Wind and solar power forecasts · Seasonal adequacy outlooksApplied here
- 03Optimisation and operations researchCapacity expansion planning · Unit commitment and dispatch · Restoration sequencingApplied here
- 04Power systems engineeringContingency and load flow studies · Frequency stability with less inertiaApplied here
- 05Materials science and chemistryBattery chemistry and thermal runaway · Ageing and corrosion of grid assetsApplied here
Where this page’s references lead.
The bodies and documents this page is read against. Status and editions change; each link goes to the issuing body.
Questions and answers.
What are dark doldrums?
Can batteries cover a week without wind?
Why use many weather years rather than one?
Are battery fires a reason to avoid storage?
Does Energy Nexus publish cost forecasts?
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