Hourly Alpine photovoltaic (PV) potential profiles for Switzerland, covering the year 2016 and spatially aggregated to two levels: Swiss alpine municipalities and the nodes of the Swiss electricity transmission grid. Six scenarios combine land suitability mask, terrain restrictions (elevation, slope, aspect), road accessibility, hazard zones, and either an elevation range or a pixel-level winter specific yield filter, providing per-pixel installed capacity and aggregated hourly generation profiles for ~713 alpine communes and ~126 transmission grid nodes.

What is in this dataset

• Hourly generation profiles (energy_yield, in Wh) for each aggregation unit
• Installed capacity (installed_capacity_mwp, in MWp) and pixel count (pixel_count) per unit
• Seasonal sums (annual_gwh, winter_gwh, summer_gwh, in GWh) per unit
• Polygon geometries (geometry, WKT in EPSG:2056) for each aggregation unit, embedded directly in the NetCDF
• Global attributes recording scenario name, panel tilt, GCR method, POA mode, and PV system parameters

Six scenarios

Scenarios vary the site-selection approach (elevation range vs. pixel-level winter specific yield threshold) and the maximum slope:

• 1. — slope ≤ 40°, elevation 1900–3300 m, aspect 90–270° on steep slopes, no winter-yield filter
• 2. — slope ≤ 40°, elevation 1500–4400 m, aspect 90–270° on steep slopes, no winter-yield filter
• 3. — slope ≤ 30°, elevation 1900–3300 m, aspect 90–270° on steep slopes, no winter-yield filter
• 4. — slope ≤ 30°, elevation 1500–4400 m, aspect 90–270° on steep slopes, no winter-yield filter
• 5. — slope ≤ 40°, elevation 100–4400 m, all aspects, winter specific yield ≥ 500 kWh/kWp
• 6. — slope ≤ 30°, elevation 100–4400 m, all aspects, winter specific yield ≥ 500 kWh/kWp

Scenarios 1-4 use a conventional elevation range together with an aspect restriction (north-facing pixels excluded on slopes > 10 deg). Scenarios 5-6 apply a pixel-level winter specific yield threshold instead.

Methodology

A pre-computed binary exclusion raster from the Swiss SolarWind Explorer (Reusser et al., 2025) serves as the base land suitability mask, integrating land-cover, protected-area, and biodiversity exclusions developed through extensive consultation with governmental, expert, and biodiversity stakeholders. On top of this base mask, the pipeline clips to alpine communes, removes natural hazards (level >= 2), applies a 5 km effective road distance filter (with vertical penalty), and applies scenario-specific terrain restrictions.

For each qualifying 25 m pixel, the ground-cover ratio is computed using the Bao et al. (2022) parametrization with a 60 deg panel tilt, and the hourly yield is derived from the CH-POA300 plane-of-array irradiance dataset (300 m resolution, 5 azimuth bins). A simplified PV system model is applied (module efficiency 20%, performance ratio 0.8, bifacial factor 1.2, inter-row shading loss 10%). For scenarios with the winter yield filter, only pixels whose simulated October--March specific yield exceeds 500 kWh/kWp are retained.

Two aggregation levels

• commune — Swiss alpine municipality; 713 units; source swissBOUNDARIES3D; CRS EPSG:2056
• node — Transmission grid Voronoi node; 126 units; source CH-RPV300 (grid_voronoi_v2); CRS EPSG:2056

File format

NetCDF-4 files, one per scenario and aggregation level (12 files total). Each file is self-contained: the hourly profiles, installed capacity, seasonal sums, polygon geometries, and scenario parameters are all embedded in the NetCDF. See data_description_v*.md included in the dataset for the full data model, coordinate definitions, and usage examples.