Hi all,
We often talk about the hurdles to using open energy models:
i) they're hard to install and operate
ii) big models need commercial solvers
iii) big models need specialised hardware (lots of RAM or lots of nodes)
Some progress has been made by some projects for i) using defined
software environments, containers and workflow management. Someday maybe
we'll make progress on ii) with open source solvers (using PIPS-IPM++?).
But it will still be hard for non-experts to operate the models.
Here's a prototype for another route: allowing users to alter important
parameters using an online dashboard and running the model at a click of
a button:
https://model.energy/scenarios/
The model is a strongly simplified version of the European
sector-coupled model PyPSA-Eur-Sec, with a reduced spatial and temporal
resolution (to get quick results) for an overnight scenario. We'll
probably extend it to higher resolutions and pathway analysis later.
Using the interface you can alter things like: removing the hydrogen
network; exploring cheap and abundant CCS; what happens if there are
breakthroughs in nuclear energy; what if solar were free; what if
onshore wind expansion is limited, etc.:
https://model.energy/scenarios/submit
Here are some previously-calculated scenarios:
https://model.energy/scenarios/results
TEMOA has a similar interface with a much snazzier GUI here:
https://temoacloud.com/
PyPSA-Server is just a prototype at the moment, but we'd be grateful for
any feedback, collaboration, improvement suggestions, or sharing of
similar ideas/platforms. It is of course all open source:
https://github.com/PyPSA/pypsa-server
It's running on a machine with 16 GB of RAM and a solver licence donated
by Gurobi.
Best wishes,
Tom
--
Prof. Dr. Tom Brown (he/him)
Department of Digital Transformation in Energy Systems
Institute of Energy Technology
Technische Universität Berlin
Group website:
https://www.ensys.tu-berlin.de/
Personal website:
https://nworbmot.org/
Visitor Address:
Einsteinufer 25 (TA 8)
10587 Berlin