A Pragmatic Multilevel Approach to Large‐scale Renewable Resource Optimization: A Test Case

In recent years, public renewable resource management agencies have devoted substantial effort to local planning. This paper analyzes and evaluates a multilevel approach to utilizing these local planning analyses as an input in developing large–scale (national) resource management plans. This approach is evaluated in a test case with a two–level prototype model that is built from a global model that serves as a standard of comparison. The two–level prototype performs well at the highest level of analysis (involving aggregated variables) but is less reliable in terms of its implications for the lower level planning units.