#README The hourly prices are a model output from HiGRID, a model developed to analyze the impact of renewable energy development on operation and performance of grid. The model forecasts net energy load (total demand less production by renewable sources) and energy pricing resolved at the hourly timestep and the contribution from different energy sources. Using the renewable generation profile, the model forecasts the hourly net energy load (i.e., gross energy load less renewable energy production) for California, and future energy pricing under different net load profiles and electric grid configurations. The incorporation of these hourly regional electricity prices from the day ahead market is a key methodological advancement over previous water-focused hydropower modeling efforts. The significant presence of energy price-driven hydropower operations in two basins (Stanislaus and Upper San Joaquin) necessitated the explicit inclusion of economic optimization for hydropower systems in those basins. ##More details for use in CenSierraPywr Electricity prices as inputs to be preprocessed can be read as csv files with rows containing hourly data, running the `preprocessing/preprocess_energy_prices.py` script in the CenSierraPywr framework. Part of the preprocessing procedure is the piecewise linearization: `preprocessing/energy_prices/piecewise_linearization.py`, which will linearize the electricity prices to be used by the planning model for the optimization of hydropower generation. For example, the script will use the file "Historical Net Load and Electricity Price.csv". The hourly prices are also preprocessed to produce the linear blocks (fraction of the day) and equivalent prices for each day. Part of the preprocessing process (`preprocessing/energy_prices/pivot_prices.py`) for energy prices will reorganize the hourly data per day, in which each row corresponds to a day, with 24 hours (columns). For example, the script will produce the hourly prices used in the daily model.