The SWITCH-China Model

The SWITCH-China Model was first developed in the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at UC Berkeley as Dr. Gang He's Ph.D. dissertation. SWITCH-China is introduced to address the challenges facing China's clean power transition: soaring variable renewable energy penetration and curtailment; pressing air pollution, water stress, climate change, and human health challenges by coal consumption. 

SWITCH, which is a loose acronym for investment in solar, wind, hydro, and conventional technologies, is an optimization model that has the objective function of minimizing the cost of producing and delivering electricity based on projected demand through the construction and retirement of various power generation, storage, and transmission options available currently and at future target dates. The SWITCH-China model provides high resolution in both the temporal and spatial dimensions, to simulate the effect of the dramatically decreasing cost for incorporating renewable energy into the power grid. SWITCH-China runs on a provincial scale and utilizes hourly data to simulate and optimize power system planning based on operational constraints. SWITCH optimizes both the long-term investment and short-term operation of the grid. The model incorporates a combination of current and advanced grid assets. Optimization is subject to reliability, constraints on operations, and resource availability, as well as on current and potential climate policies and environmental regulations.