Explore any coordinate at 250 m, inspect its expected capacity factor and temporal shape, and download a complete year of hourly wind or solar data — free, with a free account (email only, no card).
Early-stage renewable development often begins with a simple question: is the resource at this location strong enough, and shaped well enough through the day and year, to justify deeper work?
The answer should not require a lengthy data procurement process.
We have therefore opened a new Wind & Solar Resource Explorer inside CEAtlas. It combines global capacity-factor maps with site-level temporal data in the same interface, allowing users to move from a continental pattern to a selected coordinate and then directly into a usable hourly series.
The complete workflow in 99 seconds: choose wind or solar, move anywhere in the world, select a coordinate, inspect the profile and take the hourly series into a model.
What is available free
CEAtlas provides four views at any selected coordinate, for both wind and solar. The first two are open to everyone in Explore — no card, no sign-in. The annual bars, the 12 × 24 profile and the 2025 hourly series open with a free account (email only, no card); without one, Explore allows one look a day at each.
1. Mean capacity factor — and every year on the map
Click a point on the map to retrieve its expected average wind or solar capacity factor. This gives a fast, comparable first-pass measure of the resource at the site. Every year of the record, 1940 to 2025, is selectable on the map, so a single windy or calm year can be seen against the long-run mean.
2. P50, P90, variability and trend
At the selected coordinate, CEAtlas Explore shows the P50 and P90 (bankable) capacity factors, the interannual variability and the long-run trend across the 86-year record — free, no card. The annual bars, one for every year 1940–2025, open with a free account. These are the statistics a long-run resource-risk conversation starts from.
3. A 12 × 24 profile
The month-by-hour view — open with a free account, email only, no card — condenses the temporal shape into a 12-month by 24-hour matrix, over any years of the record you choose. It makes seasonal and intraday patterns immediately visible: winter wind strength, afternoon solar production, morning and evening ramps, and the differences between otherwise similar annual averages.
A single annual capacity factor can hide all of that structure. The 12 × 24 profile is intended to make it visible without requiring a modelling workflow.
4. Every hourly value for 2025
With a free account (email only, no card), users can view and download all 8,760 hourly capacity-factor values for 2025 at the selected coordinate; each file carries the account id and the time it was issued, and is licensed for your own use — attribution to CEAtlas requested. The output can be used in early-stage energy models, screening cases, indicative production profiles and comparisons between candidate sites.
The free workflow is global. Choose the wind or solar layer, move to the location that matters, click the site, pick a year or the statistics, then sign in with an email address to inspect the profile and download 2025. Without an account, Explore allows one look a day at each of the hourly series, the 12 × 24 profile and the annual bars.
From global patterns to local terrain
The resource layers are presented at 250 m resolution. This allows CEAtlas to preserve the visual connection between broad weather-resource patterns and the local terrain differences that matter during screening.
For wind, users can see how coastlines, mountain ranges, plains and offshore areas change the expected resource. For solar, the same map-based workflow exposes regional and local differences while allowing comparisons between fixed-tilt and single-axis-tracker configurations.
The intention is not to replace detailed engineering analysis. It is to make the first stages of it faster, more consistent and easier to repeat. The full derivation — the weather store, the physics chain, the meaning of the 250 m layer and its limitations — is published openly on the CEAtlas methodology page.
What Analyst and Desk add
One year of hourly data is useful for testing a workflow, and the free statistics show how a site behaves across the record. Modelling with the record itself — every hour since 1940 — is the paid step.
CEAtlas Analyst unlocks the full 86-year hourly history, 1940 to 2025, at any coordinate; Desk removes the limits. It is the same validated record (PVGIS hourly r ≈ 0.95; MERRA-2; 583 US metered plants) that sits under every CEAtlas siting study. Specifically:
- Analyst — 86-year hourly downloads at any coordinate, 20 a month, shared with site analyses;
- Analyst — IEC1, IEC3 and automatic turbine-class selection for wind;
- Analyst — seasonal and monthly resource maps;
- Analyst — the ECMWF IFS 9 km dataset alongside ERA5; and
- Desk — unlimited downloads, in bulk via Pipeline mode and the API.
This creates a natural progression within one product: use the free tier to find the question, then use the historical record when the answer needs to support a commercial decision.
Where the workflow is useful
The Resource Explorer is designed for developers, investors, analysts, researchers and energy-system modellers who need to:
- screen a new wind or solar location quickly;
- compare candidate coordinates on a consistent basis;
- understand the temporal shape behind an annual average;
- create an initial hourly production series;
- test wind, fixed-tilt solar and tracker-solar assumptions; or
- decide where detailed measurement and project-specific analysis should be concentrated.
Capacity-factor outputs are provided for screening and analytical use. They do not replace on-site measurement, turbine or module selection, loss modelling, wake and shading studies, electrical design, or a project-specific bankable energy-yield assessment.
Start with any coordinate
The Wind & Solar Resource Explorer is live now inside the free CEAtlas Explore tier; a free account (email only, no card) opens the 12 × 24 profile, the annual bars and the 2025 hourly download at any coordinate. For the full 1940–2025 hourly record, see CEAtlas Analyst and Desk.