Kickstarting model with a set of unified scenarios for the open decarbonization initiative.
The project aims to develop a generic capacity expansion model which can be (relatively) easily applied to any territory (country/region) to evaluate intermittent renewable energy potential and electric power system design with a high to 100% share of renewables. The initial "kickstarting" model will not consider any existing generating capacity, evaluating the potential of renewables, based on 40-years of hourly meteorological data from NASA's MERRA-2 project. As a result, the project will assemble, adopt, or develop:
- Scripts to formulate multi-region capacity expansion model with 1-hour resolution (8760 sub-annual time-slices in total);
- Scripts to process MERRA-2 data and acquire (up to 40-years) time series of wind- and solar- energy;
- Scripts to run the model and scenarios;
- Scripts for processing the modeling results, generic reporting, and sharing under the open decarbonization project. The modeling language of the project is R with energyRt. The model can be solved with one of the popular mathematical programming languages (see www.energyRt.org for details).
- multiple regions (minimum two, recommended 30+, will be used as nodes for UHVDC grid);
- one year of optimization with one-hour time resolution, full-year (8760 time-slices);
- solar PV and wind turbines technologies;
- (optional) fossil-fuels-fired generating technologies, hydro-, and nuclear-energy;
- energy storage technologies;
- several levels of the final demand (fixed or variable in time, exogenous or optimized location).
As the starting point, the project will adopt a model initially developed under Feasibility study of China’s electric power sector transition to zero emissions by 2050 (by Oleg Lugovoy, Shuo Gao, Ji Gao, Kejun Jiang, under review), and currently being applied to USA, India, and several other countries.
The pilot project is a short-term project, starting now in May 2020 and is expected to conclude at the end of Summer 2020, delivering the generic kick-start model, open models for the participating countries, and the set of unified scenarios. The project will include up to 7 countries/regions.
The project can provide support in developing the model for up to two 2 additional teams. Researchers/modelers who are interested in developing/applying the model for a particular country or region, please contact: opendecarbonization@gmail.com, olugovoy@edf.org.