In this week we deal with Scenarios for energy systems sustainability assessment. Scenarios play a pivotal role and in the context of the energy transition and renewable energy systems development they play a pivotal role for understanding possible suitable transformation pathways. Here you will learn about types of energy scenarios, their scopes and structures.
I. Theory input
- General theoretical introduction on Scenarios with special focus on techno-economic approaches – Video and Slides
- Introduction to System Dynamic Approaches (SDA) as a very distintctive type of scenarios often used in policy making – Video and Slides
II. Tools for scenario modelling
Open – source tools for scenario modelling:
- TIMES (The Integrated MARKAL-EFOM System) – Model. Developed by the Energy Technology Systems Analysis Program, which is a Technology Cooperation Program of the International Energy Agency. It is not easy to use and requires extensive inputs. But has good and extensive documentation.
- PySD: simulating system dynamics in python. This repository is being developed, which means some functions may not be easy to implement. But it has good documentation.
- And here you can find a paper about the PySD package and how to apply it. Martin-Martinez et al. (2022). PySD: System Dynamics Modeling in Python. Journal of Open Source Software, 7 (78), 4329. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.04329.1 (17) (PDF) PySD: System Dynamics Modeling in Python. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364348643_PySD_System_Dynamics_Modeling_in_Python#fullTextFileContent [accessed Mar 08 2024].
Open (i.e. gratis) software for scenario modelling
- Energy plan as one free-available techno-economical scenario software. it has a good graphical interface, requires extensive inputs (as often in scenario modelling) but has examples and data sources available. Here you can find a tutorial I prepared long ago about the Energy Plan software: Video and Slides. And the official Tutorial to Energy Plan.
Literature
Here comes a very “hot” techno-economic scenario analysis on the economic impacts of the transformation of the mobility sector in Germany to climate neutrality. Unfortunately it is only in German! 🙁
As the SDA approach may be somwhat “exotic” to many of you, here you can find some papers applying it in the energy context.
- Muttingi et al. 2017. System dynamics approaches to energy policy modelling and simulation. 4th International Conference on Power and Energy Systems Engineering, CPESE 2017, 25-29 September 2017, Berlin, Germany. Energy Procedia 141 (2017) 532–539. DOI:10.1016/j.egypro.2017.11.071
- Haase, Torio. 2020. The Impact of the Climate Action Programme 2030 and Federal State Measures on the Uptake of Renewable Heating Systems in Lower Saxony’s Building Stock. Energies 2021, 14(9), 2533; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14092533
Here you find the links to the study (in German) , its summary in english and data I discussed about renewable energies taking over the nuclear generated electricity in Germany after the nuclear phase out (GER) in 2023. Though previous scenarios relied on domestic coal plants to take over that burden, in the end renewable energy generation in summer dumped the electricity prices being more competitive than coal power plants and leading to an increase in their share (see Ein Jahr ohne Kernkraft: Erneuerbare Energien ausgebaut, fossile Energiegewinnung deutlich gesunken – Fraunhofer ISE)