The deployment of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) is driving modern power systems towards a fundamental green transition. In this regard, there is a need to develop models to accurately capture the variability of wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) power, at different geographical and temporal scales. This paper presents a general methodology based on meteorological reanalysis techniques allowing to simulate aggregated RES time series over large geographical areas. It also introduces a novel PV conversion approach based on aggregated power curves in order to capture the uncertainty associated to the technical characteristics of individual installations spread across large regions. The proposed methodology is validated using actual power data in Europe and can be applied to represent intermittent generation in network development plans, reliability and market studies, as well as operational guidelines. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.