Spatial strategies for siting variable renewable energy sources to ensure weather resilience in Switzerland

Weather resilience of the electricity system with high shares of Variable Renewable Energy Sources (VRES) could potentially be increased by spatially siting these sources in a way that dims the impact of weather. Here, we use single-year high-resolution modeling to test the resilience of the Swiss electricity system in 2035 under four siting strategies for new solar PV, wind power plants, and heat pumps: expected siting (continuation of the current spatial trends), even siting that is proportional to the technical potential or population, and the minimum system cost approach from the system's perspective. Using weather data from 1995 to 2019, we calculate nine electricity system resilience indicators for each siting strategy, accounting for diversification, decentralization, import dependency, load shedding, and curtailment. We find that a Swiss system in 2035 running fully or almost fully on VRES is resilient to historical weather variations. The four siting strategies perform relatively similarly in terms of resilience, indicating that VRES locations are neither a major concern nor a promising solution to influence weather resilience in a small country, like Switzerland. Having said that, minimum system cost approach that sites technologies in a cost-optimal way from the system's perspective has consistent, albeit minor, advantages for resilience, especially for minimizing load shedding and curtailment.