# A validated high-resolution hydro power time-series model for energy systems analysis

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a validated, high-resolution hydro power time series model that enhances energy system analysis by capturing hydroelectric flexibility, validated on Chinese reservoirs, and applicable globally for long-term planning.

## Contribution

The paper presents a novel, globally applicable high-resolution hydro power model that incorporates hydro cascades and is validated with real data, improving energy system simulations.

## Key findings

- Validated daily inflow time series for 41 Chinese hydro stations.
- Demonstrated application in long-term energy investment planning.
- Model based on globally available high-resolution datasets.

## Abstract

We expand the renewable technology model palette and present a validated high resolution hydro power time series model for energy systems analysis. Among the popular renewables, hydroelectricity shows unique storage-like flexibility, which is particularly important given the high variability of wind and solar power. Often limited by data availability or computational performance, a high resolution, globally applicable and validated hydro power time series model has not been available. For a demonstration, we focus on 41 Chinese reservoir-based hydro stations as a demo, determine their upstream basin areas, estimate their inflow based on gridded surface runoff data and validate their daily inflow time series in terms of both flow volume and potential power generation. Furthermore, we showcase an application of these time series with hydro cascades in energy system long term investment planning. Our method's novelty lies in:it is based on highly resolved spatial-temporal datasets; both data and algorithms used here are globally applicable; it includes a hydro cascade model that can be integrated into energy system simulations.