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Simplifying Networks
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The simplification ``snakemake`` rules prepare **approximations** of the full model, for which it is computationally viable to co-optimize generation, storage and transmission capacities.

- :mod:`simplify_network` transforms the transmission grid to a 380 kV only equivalent network, while
- :mod:`cluster_network` uses a `k-means <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-means_clustering>`_ based clustering technique to partition the network into a given number of zones and then reduce the network to a representation with one bus per zone.

The simplification and clustering steps are described in detail in the paper

- Jonas Hörsch and Tom Brown. `The role of spatial scale in joint optimisations of generation and transmission for European highly renewable scenarios <https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.07617>`_), *14th International Conference on the European Energy Market*, 2017. `arXiv:1705.07617 <https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.07617>`_, `doi:10.1109/EEM.2017.7982024 <https://doi.org/10.1109/EEM.2017.7982024>`_.

.. toctree::
   :caption: Overview
   
   simplification/simplify_network
   simplification/cluster_network
   simplification/prepare_network