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Summary The positive impact of the complementarity between renewable generation sources has been presented in several studies, but this concept has been neglected in many studies of expansion planning. This paper presents a new approach to introduce the complementarity between renewable energy resources and regions into the expansion planning for 100% renewable energy systems. A novel objective function is proposed to optimize the electricity mix and the water flow of hydropower reservoirs, considering the daily and yearly variations. A case study is presented with the objective of assessing the optimum mix (for the complementarity perspective) between solar, wind, hydro, and biomass power to ensure the expected monthly and hourly energy demand for Brazil in 2050. In the Brazilian case, when the complementarity between regions was considered, it was possible to ensure the electricity demand increase without new large reservoirs and with a high contribution from all renewable generation sources. A mix to ensure the daily and annual demand in 2050, which promotes the best complementarity, is presented, resulting in a share of 27%, 16%, 34%, and 23% for photovoltaic, wind, hydro, and biomass power, respectively.

The benefits of complementarity between renewable energy sources have been presented as having a positive impact, but it has been neglected in generation expansion planning studies. In this paper the complementarity between renewable energy sources and regions of Brazil is characterized and the correlation coefficients are analyzed. A methodology is also proposed to optimize the complementarity between the sources, reducing the energy storage requirements. The methodology is applied to the Brazilian case to meet the projected demand for 2050 with a 100% renewable system and the complementarity is analyzed. The characterization of the data allowed us to propose five solar regions, four wind regions, three hydro regions and a region to represent the biomass. It was possible to find complementarity (negative correlation) of: 0.97 between hydro regions; 0.86 between wind and hydro regions and; 0.96 between biomass and hydro. The proposed methodology allowed us to know which regions and their respective technologies best benefit the electrical system, being the North for solar and the Northeast for wind. Finally, it was possible to reduce the demand for water storage with sources and regions that complement the seasonal hydro drought period.

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