Archetypes of Country Energy Systems

Global challenges as decarbonization, the integration of renewables or an increasing electrification are confronting countries worldwide. Based on an analysis of different energy system models, archetypes of country energy systems are identified as an approach to simplify modeling the global challenges for most countries around the world. Applying a modified K-means algorithm to a broad and transparent data basis of socio-economic, geographic/climatic and energy-related data leads to the definition of the archetypes. An exemplary clustering of 140 countries generating 15 archetypes underlines the existence of patterns in energy systems, which can e.g. be characterized by the climatic circumstances or the energy mix. Overall the archetypes represent a possibility to summarize countries on a global level, leading to a simplified modeling process of countries in energy system models, providing a common data basis for models and identifying common challenges of different countries.