Harmonized and Open Energy Dataset for Modeling a Highly Renewable Brazilian Power System

Abstract

Improvements in modeling energy systems of populous emerging economies are highly decisive for a successful global energy transition. The models used – increasingly published open source – still suffer from the lack of appropriate open data. As an illustrative example, we take the Brazilian energy system, which has great potential for renewable energy resources but still relies heavily on fossil fuels. We provide a comprehensive open dataset for scenario analyses, which can be directly used with the popular open energy system model PyPSA and other modeling frameworks. It includes three categories: 1) time series data of variable renewable potentials, electricity load profiles, inflows for the hydropower plants, and cross-border electricity exchanges, 2) geo-referenced data for 27 defined regions, and 3) tabular data, which contains power plant data with installed and planned generation capacities, aggregated grid network topology, biomass thermal plant potential, as well as scenarios of energy demand. This data fosters global or country-specific energy system studies based on open data relevant to decarbonizing Brazil’s energy system.