This study explores the required investments for achieving a 100% renewable power system in Bolivia by 2035. The investigation encompasses expansion across generation units, transmission network, and battery storage systems. A particular emphasis is placed on utility-scale battery storage’s pivotal role in enhancing flexibility, particularly in conjunction with significant integration of solar and wind generation. Four distinct pathways are developed to represent diverse policy directions for the future of Bolivia’s power system, with a focus on two pathways striving for a fully renewable energy system. Notably, hydropower expansion is excluded due to recent environmental concerns, allowing a concentrated examination of battery storage’s pivotal role in delivering flexibility. To optimize these pathways, an open-source model, PyPSA-Earth, is utilized. The model is then tailored to ensure an adequate representation of the Bolivian power system. To this end, the open-source model first undergoes a comprehensive validation process based on which several configurations and datasets are updated. We then analyse the optimisation results of the four pathways regarding their total system costs, the needed generation capacity expansion and the dispatch.
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