Renewable Electricity Data: Fleets, National Statistics and Grid Time Series · Head-to-head
Global Solar Power Tracker vs Global Wind Power Tracker
Which renewable electricity data: fleets, national statistics and grid time series data fits your job: Global Solar Power Tracker, or Global Wind Power Tracker. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Global Solar Power Tracker
Global Wind Power Tracker
Where the fields line up
10 shared fields — join on these.
| Field | Global Solar Power Tracker | Global Wind Power Tracker |
|---|---|---|
Project Name | documented | documented |
Phase Name | documented | documented |
Capacity (MW) | documented | documented |
Status | documented | documented |
Country/Area | documented | documented |
Region / Subregion | documented | documented |
Start Year | documented | documented |
Operator | documented | documented |
Green Hydrogen | documented | documented |
GEM Location ID / GEM Project ID | documented | documented |
Coverage, side by side
| Global Solar Power Tracker | Global Wind Power Tracker | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | Worldwide; distributed solar aggregated for 31 countries and areas | 166 countries and areas, comprehensive above 10 MW |
| Temporal | Current snapshot with February 2026 vintage; history carried as per-phase start years | Current snapshot with February 2026 vintage; history carried as per-phase start years |
| Granularity | One record per project phase; national aggregates for distributed solar | One record per project phase |
What each contains
They tie on 2 attributes. Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| Global Solar Power Tracker | Global Wind Power Tracker | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Global Energy Monitor | Global Energy Monitor |
| Subject lens | Facility-level inventory of the world's utility-scale solar fleet, photovoltaic and solar thermal, plus aggregated distributed solar | Facility-level inventory of utility-scale wind development, onshore and offshore, including captive industrial wind |
| Documented fields | 16 fields, definitions verified during research | 13 fields, definitions verified during research |
| Size | 103,940 phases; 2,093 GWac operating and 2,247 GWac prospective capacity | 32,227 phases; 1,129 GW operating and about 2,656 GW prospective capacity |
| Geographic coverage | Worldwide; distributed solar aggregated for 31 countries and areas | 166 countries and areas, comprehensive above 10 MW |
| Temporal coverage | Current snapshot with February 2026 vintage; history carried as per-phase start years | Current snapshot with February 2026 vintage; history carried as per-phase start years |
| Granularity | One record per project phase; national aggregates for distributed solar | One record per project phase |
| Signature extra fields | `Technology Type`, `Location Accuracy`, `Storage`, external-ID crosswalks | `Installation Type` (onshore, offshore hard mount, floating, unknown) |
| Best for | Asset-level solar questions: technology splits, siting confidence, storage co-location, distributed-share analysis | Placement and pipeline questions: onshore versus offshore, floating depth classes, prospective-capacity sizing |
Where they're equivalent
More than their different sizes suggest. The same eight-value status vocabulary governs both, inferred shelving included. Both resolve to the phase, so a half-built expansion never contaminates its operating sibling. Both grade coordinates rather than pretending precision. Both dropped routine operator research outside China in mid-2024, so treat that column as China-deep in either record. Both flag hydrogen-dedicated phases identically, and both switched to the current identifier scheme in the same year. Both hold February 2026 vintages, so a combined pull starts time-aligned. Both scored 9 of 10 against the rubric, with definitions verified rather than inferred. On paper the pair disagrees about almost nothing except what spins.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - one publisher, two fleets, and your question decides.
Take Global Solar Power Tracker when the question lives inside solar. Technology splits, siting confidence, storage co-location, the distributed-solar share of national fleets, or bridging into external asset registries.
Take Global Wind Power Tracker when the question names placement or the pipeline. Onshore against offshore, hard mount against floating, captive industrial wind, or sizing the 2,656 GW queue by installation type.
Three quick tests settle most cases. Need a technology split within one renewable? Solar side. Need water depth or an offshore boundary? Wind side. Need the whole generation transition as one asset panel? That is the both-of-them case. Market researchers tend to start with wind's placement axes, investors and quants with the pipeline splits, and data scientists with whichever fleet their model lacks.
Sample both, pick by fit. See Global Solar Power Tracker · See Global Wind Power Tracker
Or take both in one feed
Yes - as two halves of one generation-transition panel.
Union them on the shared spine: project and phase identifiers, status, country, region, start year, capacity and coordinates. The result is a single asset table where solar's 103,940 phases and wind's 32,227 share one status ladder, which is precisely what a portfolio view or a market-sizing model wants. For worked examples of that kind of build, see market sizing and ML model training.
Three seams decide whether the merge holds. First, capacity conventions: solar preserves raw AC and DC ratings per row and normalizes summaries to MWac at a 0.87 inverter loading ratio, while wind carries nameplate megawatts throughout - restate units before summing anything. Second, thresholds: assets between 1 and 10 MW appear only on the solar side, and its distributed segment is aggregate-only, so bottom-up sums will miss it. Third, ownership strings are researched from corporate disclosures in both, so normalize legal-entity suffixes before matching counterparties across fleets. For citation-grade provenance work on either fleet, see citation-grade research.
Datadory ships either tracker alone or both merged onto one calendar, aligned on identifiers so the join lands already done - delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is the Global Solar Power Tracker better than the Global Wind Power Tracker?
Better at different jobs. The solar tracker wins on asset density - 103,940 phases against 32,227 - and on typing: photovoltaic versus solar thermal, exact-versus-approximate coordinates, storage co-location flags. The wind tracker wins on placement: onshore against offshore, hard mount against floating, and a 2,656 GW prospective pipeline resolved by installation type. Sample both, pick by fit.
Do both trackers record projects at the same level of detail?
Yes - the phase is the unit in both. Each phase carries its own status, capacity, coordinates, start year and ownership, while projects group their phases together, and both dictionaries assign stable identifiers at project and location level. Below their size floors the treatment diverges: solar aggregates sub-1-MW distributed panels into national totals for 31 countries, while wind parks below-threshold projects in a separate tab.
How do the two trackers separate operating from prospective capacity?
Through the same status ladder on every phase. Solar: 2,093 GWac operating against 2,247 GWac prospective across 103,940 phases, running announced through retired. Wind: 1,129 GW operating against roughly 2,656 GW prospective across 32,227 phases, using the identical vocabulary. Because status rides on every row, any operating-versus-pipeline cut is one filter away in either record.
Can the Global Solar Power Tracker and Global Wind Power Tracker be joined into one renewables panel?
Yes, on the fields they share: project and phase identifiers, status, country, region, start year, capacity and coordinates. Restate capacity before summing - solar preserves raw AC and DC ratings per row while normalizing summaries to MWac, wind carries nameplate megawatts throughout. Mind the floors too: assets between 1 and 10 MW exist only on the solar side, whose distributed segment is aggregate-only.
Can I get both trackers from Datadory?
Yes - sample both, pick by fit, or take both in one feed. Datadory normalizes each tracker to its documented field dictionary, attaches sample rows for validation, and delivers them on the schedule your workflow needs - daily, weekly, or hourly, your call - next to the rest of the renewable electricity catalog.