Power Plant Siting Results for GODEEEP

Introduction

This dataset contains power plant infrastructure siting information modeled by the Capacity Expansion Regional Feasibility (CERF) model for the GODEEEP project for the purpose of studying power plant landscape evolution under alternative capacity expansion scenarios. 

CERF is an open-source geospatial Python package for evaluating and analyzing future electricity technology capacity expansion feasibility.

Summaries of each of the two siting scenarios included are provided below. For additional information, see Ou et al. 2023and the GODEEEP website.

Scenario Descriptions

• business_as_usual_ira_ccs_climate :
  • This scenario does not include any long-term federal policies requiring decarbonization.
  • It does include the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) incentives.
  • It assumes that CCS technologies are available.
• net_zero_ira_ccs_climate:
  • This scenario includes a clean electricity grid in the U.S. by 2035 and a net-zero economy by 2050.
  • It does include US IRA incentives.
  • It assumes that CCS technologies are available.

Climate and Socioeconomic Assumptions

• Climate: These scenarios include the dynamic effects of a climate pathway (RCP8.5) on heating and cooling degree days (HDD/CDD) in the period 2020-2050. 
• Socioeconomic: Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2. A "middle of the road" socioeconomic pathway where population and economic growth trends follow historical patterns.

Data Information

• Coordinates provided in each of the data files follows the NAD 1983 Albers contiguous USA Coordinate Reference System (ESRI:102003).
• New infrastructure sitings are provided for the 11 states in the Western Interconnection including: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
• The file type represents a specific spatial resolution of infrastructure sitings:
  •  1 km level data: 
    
    • Includes new power plant sitings by year at a 1 km-squared resolution.
    • For technologies where a representative power plant facility can be sited within the area of a single square km (e.g., natural gas, biomass), coordinates provided at this resolution are representative of the entire plant location where the facility is sited. 
    • For Solar PV, Solar CSP, Onshore Wind, and Offshore Wind technologies, representative power plants (i.e., farms) are typically larger than a single square km. Therefore, coordinates provided at the 1 km-squared resolution in this file represent the total capacity (MW) of these technologies that was sited within a 1 km x 1km grid cell and does not represent a standalone wind or solar farm facility or an individual wind turbine.
  • Plant-level data
    • This file type includes all power plant locations at the plant level including both new additions and pre-existing facilities.
    • Coordinates in this file represent the center of a power plant facility.
    • For CERF-sited technologies where a representative power plant facility can be sited within the area of a single square km (e.g., natural gas,  biomass), coordinates will match those provided in the CERF siting output file.
    • For coodinates associated with CERF-sited Solar PV, Solar CSP, Onshore Wind, and Offshore Wind farms, the center coordinates of the farm are provided. Farms in this file are spatially-clustered aggregates of individual 1 km-squared solar and wind sitings from the CERF-siting output.

File Descriptions

Data Descriptions

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the Grid Operations, Decarbonization, Environmental and Energy Equity Platform (GODEEEP) Investment, under the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

PNNL is a multi-program national laboratory operated for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) by Battelle Memorial Institute under Contract No. DE-AC05-76RL01830.