Task 1 Report - Assessment of Data Availability to Inform Energy Planning Analyses: Energy Alternatives Study for the Lao People's Democratic Republic: Smart Infrastructure for the Mekong Program

Task 2 Report - A GIS-Based Technical Potential Assessment of Domestic Energy Resources for Electricity Generation

“…The work was carried out by a team from the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in collaboration with MEM and other Lao power sector stakeholders. (Lee et al 2018) This work concentrates on domestic energy resources for utility-scale electricity generation and considers solar photovoltaic (PV), wind, biomass, and coal resources. This work does not consider potentially imported energy resources (e.g., natural gas) or domestic energy resources that are not present in sufficient quantity for utility-scale generation (e.g., geothermal resources).…”

“…This work does not consider potentially imported energy resources (e.g., natural gas) or domestic energy resources that are not present in sufficient quantity for utility-scale generation (e.g., geothermal resources). A technical potential assessment of hydropower resources is currently not feasible due to the absence of required data including site-level assessments of multiple characteristics (e.g., geology environment and access) as well as spatial data on estimated non-exploited hydropower resources (Lee et al 2018). Previous studies estimated total hydropower resource potential to be between 23,000 and 26,000 MW, of which approximately 3,894 MW has been developed (IES and MKE 2016;MEM 2015bMEM , 2011.…”

“…Currently, the best available data for wind and solar in Lao PDR provides long-term, annual, average wind speed and wind power densities. MEM could improve these data by creating or procuring high-resolution resource data for wind and solar (preferably hourly or subhourly) as these finer resolutions better capture the variability of resources within timeframes that are relevant to power system operations (Lee et al 2018;Lopez et al Forthcoming).…”

“…As described in Brown et al (2016), the terms and definitions used for resource and generation potential for RE and non-RE resources may appear analogous; however, these terms and definitions are not immediately transferable and the results may not be quantitatively comparable. It is, therefore, important to detail how RE and non-RE resources are addressed in the current work and the Energy Alternatives Study (Lee et al 2018). 7…”

“…High-resolution, modeled annual average solar and wind resource data are available on the RE Data Explorer, a webbased application that provides spatial data and analysis capabilities for Lao PDR and other regions. 8 The data currently available on RE Data Explorer can be augmented as higher resolution data and data for other resources of interest become available (Lee et al 2018).…”