Renewable energy here is the sum of hydropower, wind, solar, geothermal, modern biomass and wave and tidal energy. Traditional biomass – the burning of charcoal, crop waste, and other organic matter – is not included. This can be an important energy source in lower-income settings. Guinea: How much of the country’s energy comes from nuclear power?
Energy storage complicates such a modeling approach. Improving the representation of the balance of the system can have major effects in capturing energy-storage costs and benefits. Given its physical characteristics and the range of services that it can provide, energy storage raises unique modeling challenges.
The importance of capturing chronology can raise challenges in energy-storage modeling. Some models ‘decouple’ individual operating periods from one another, allowing for natural decomposition and rendering the models relatively computationally tractable. Energy storage complicates such a modeling approach.