Electricity grid

To create an electricity grid we rely heavily on gridfinder data. This dataset provides transmission and distribution edges with substantial global coverage. It also contains a set of 'targets' or electricity consuming areas, derived from Night Time Lights (NTL) satellite imagery. Our other major data source for electricity grid creation is the World Resources Institute's (WRI) powerplants database.

The workflow currently divides network creation by country. One may request one country, or several. Note that neighbouring countries' networks are not connected with one another.

Description

• Download gridfinder electricity grid data (line edges, 'target' consuming polygons)
• Create global 'targets' file, where each electricity consuming target is annotated with the population and GDP of the enclosed area.
• Download WRI powerplant data
• Download GDP per capita data
• Download population data
• Construct an electricity grid for each country to be studied where nodes are power generators or target consumers. Power consumption is proportional to the GDP enclosed by each target polygon.

Configuration

There aren't currently any options to configure when creating an electricity grid.

Creation

Here's an example grid creation command for Puerto Rico:

snakemake --cores all -- results/power/by_country/PRI/network/edges.geoparquet

Note that the folder name under by_county is an ISO 3166 Alpha-3 country code, specifying the country in question.