The objective of this work was to investigate the implications of weather variability on the resilience of the future Swiss electricity sector in 2035 by testing the sector against data from 25 historical weather years (1995–2019) and modeling spatial and temporal patterns of electricity demand and generation. This work provides high-resolution spatial detail to the SWEET SURE analysis of extreme weather shocks and the quantification of the system’s resilience. The work consists of two chapters (two journal paper manuscripts) presenting the acquired results: (i) a manuscript on the impact of historical weather conditions on the Swiss electricity system in 2035, comparing four strategies of spatially siting solar photovoltaics (PV), wind power, and heat pumps and (ii) a manuscript on cost-optimal and near-optimal designs of the Swiss electricity system, including generation, storage and transmission, that are resilient to the weather conditions of historical years (1995–2019). The results show that from year-to-year weather conditions notably influence the operation and resilient designs of the system, where weather conditions have a higher influence on the system than the investigated siting strategies. Hence, locations of solar PV, wind power, and heat pumps are neither a major concern nor an influential solution to determine the system’s resilience. 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, especially for minimizing load shedding and curtailment. Without any wind power in 2035, Switzerland would need 35 GW of solar PV capacity to reach its target of 35 TWh/year on new renewable electricity in 95% of the 25 historical weather years analyzed. An additional 10 GW of wind power would be required under the additional policy of restricting net electricity import in winter to a maximum volume of 5 TWh/year. Similar levels of resilience could also be reached with 12 GW of solar PV and 18 GW of wind power, or with 20 GW of solar PV and 13.5 GW of wind power.
