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Title: helios: An R package to process heating and cooling degrees for GCAM

Journal Article · · Journal of Open Source Software
DOI:https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.06033· OSTI ID:2314981

helios is an open-source R package that estimates population-weighted heating and cooling degree-hours (HDH and CDH) and degree-days (HDD and CDD) at various temporal (e.g., energy dispatch segments, monthly, yearly) and spatial scales (e.g., U.S. states, global political regions, countries). The degree hour and degree day outputs from helios are used to inform electricity demand load in the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) as well as in GCAM-USA (which is the version of GCAM with U.S. state-level details). helios uses a workflow with four steps: processing raw data; calculating heating and cooling degrees; visualizing performance diagnostics; and outputing results in various formats. There are two sources of widely-used climate data compatible with helios: (1) hourly climate data with 12-km resolution that are dynamically downscaled with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and projected using a thermal global warming (TGW) approach; and (2) daily climate data with 0.5-degree resolution from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) that is bias-adjusted and statistical downscaled by the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP). In summary, helios is a model that standardizes methodology of heating and cooling degrees-hours and degree-days using publicly available data and advance the understanding of the impact of spatial and temporal temperature variability on building energy services.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
2314981
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-188047
Journal Information:
Journal of Open Source Software, Vol. 9, Issue 94; ISSN 2475-9066
Publisher:
Open Source Initiative - NumFOCUSCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (8)

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GCAM v5.1: representing the linkages between energy, water, land, climate, and economic systems journal January 2019
Impacts of long-term temperature change and variability on electricity investments journal March 2021
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The R-based climate4R open framework for reproducible climate data access and post-processing journal January 2019
Integrated assessment of climate impacts and adaptation in the energy sector journal November 2014
GCAM-USA v5.3_water_dispatch: integrated modeling of subnational US energy, water, and land systems within a global framework journal March 2022