[en] The distribution, availability, and quality of variable renewable energy (VRE) resources often strongly influence expansion plans of power systems. As a result, the need for geospatially explicit assessments of VRE has become increasingly important, as they can significantly improve planning efforts, for example, by guiding more cost-efficient investment decisions. This is particularly relevant in developing economies, where financial resources are limited and must be carefully allocated, and in large countries, where heterogeneous conditions can be expected across regions.
This study addresses these aspects by making use of the Model-Supply Regions (MSR) tool to identify and characterize the expansion potential and costs of VRE resources at the national level, using Bolivia as its case study. In particular, it explores the sensitivity of costs associated with wind and solar resource exploitation to strategic parameters such as spatial distribution, resource availability, technology costs, or distance to relevant infrastructure (among others). The analysis produces a suite of cost–supply curves that reflect the economic and technical constraints of resource exploitation. These outputs are formulated so that they can be easily integrated into future planning exercises for the power system to inform decisions on maximum expansion capacities, cost-effectiveness of each technology, and the prioritization of key aspects for the system expansion.
