Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Publication Date
9 November 2023

Harmonized geospatial data to support infrastructure siting feasibility planning for energy system transitions

Authors

Author

Climate change, energy system transitions, and socioeconomic change are compounding influences affecting the growth of electricity demand. While energy efficiency initiatives and distributed resources can address a significant amount of this demand, the United States will likely still need new utility-scale generation resources. The energy sector uses capacity expansion planning models to determine the aggregate need for new generation, but these models are typically at the state or regional scale and are not equipped to address the wide range of location- and technology-specific issues that are increasingly a factor in power plant siting. To help address these challenges, we have developed the Geospatial Raster Input Data for Capacity Expansion Regional Feasibility (GRIDCERF) data package, a high-resolution product to evaluate siting suitability for renewable and non-renewable power plants in the conterminous United States. GRIDCERF offers 264 suitability layers for use with 56 power plant technologies in a harmonized format that can be easily ingested by geospatially-enabled modeling software allowing for customization to robustly address science objectives when evaluating varying future conditions.

Vernon, Chris R., Kendall Mongird, Kristian D. Nelson, and Jennie S. Rice. 2023. “Harmonized Geospatial Data To Support Infrastructure Siting Feasibility Planning For Energy System Transitions”. Scientific Data 10 (1). Springer Science and Business Media LLC. doi:10.1038/s41597-023-02694-y.
Funding Program Area(s)
Additional Resources:
NERSC (National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center)