Preparing Networks¶

The preparation process of the PyPSA-Eur energy system model consists of a group of snakemake rules which are briefly outlined and explained in detail in the sections below.

Not all data dependencies are shipped with the git repository. Instead we provide separate data bundles which can be obtained using the retrieve* rules (Rules retrieve*). Having downloaded the necessary data,

build_shapes generates GeoJSON files with shapes of the countries, exclusive economic zones and NUTS3 areas.
build_cutout prepares smaller weather data portions from ERA5 for cutout europe-2013-era5 and SARAH for cutout europe-2013-sarah.

With these and the externally extracted ENTSO-E online map topology (data/entsoegridkit), it can build a base PyPSA network with the following rules:

base_network builds and stores the base network with all buses, HVAC lines and HVDC links, while
build_bus_regions determines Voronoi cells for all substations.

Then the process continues by calculating conventional power plant capacities, potentials, and per-unit availability time series for variable renewable energy carriers and hydro power plants with the following rules:

build_powerplants for today’s thermal power plant capacities using powerplantmatching allocating these to the closest substation for each powerplant,
build_natura_raster for rasterising NATURA2000 natural protection areas,
build_renewable_profiles for the hourly capacity factors and installation potentials constrained by land-use in each substation’s Voronoi cell for PV, onshore and offshore wind, and
build_hydro_profile for the hourly per-unit hydro power availability time series.

The central rule add_electricity then ties all the different data inputs together into a detailed PyPSA network stored in networks/elec.nc.