Free as in beer demand, papers and teaching resources
Mark Howells
Some fabulous news. (Under the radar a couple of years ago) the Model for the Analysis of Energy Demand (MAED) a widely used tool was free'ed into the wild. It has been open-sourced by the brilliant peeps at the IAEA. You can get:
Best, Mark
Joint Director STEER Centre, Loughborough University
Robbie Morrison
Hello Mark, all
I have been trying to update the open source status of MAED and FinPlan — as I do with many projects (including the TIMES model generator), in part to keep this community current and also to update Wikipedia when I get the chance. Here are some recent forum posts of mine on those two codebases:
- https://forum.openmod.org/t/international-agency-opens-demand-estimation-software/3672/8
- https://forum.openmod.org/t/international-agency-opens-demand-estimation-software/3672/9
Indeed, I was just drafting an email to M Welsh of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to see what was happening when your openmod posting arrived. The MAED code repository URL you list, and the FinPlan repo that I found by searching, have not had a single code commit in their over two year of existence. In fact, at one point, someone removed and reinstated the license notices for both repos. So these are not active open source projects, surely?
Did you accidentally point to the wrong repo for MAED? Or have I simply got it wrong? The MAED repo I have and its activity log, are as follows:
- https://github.com/Model-for-Analysis-of-Energy-Demand/MAED-Code
- https://github.com/Model-for-Analysis-of-Energy-Demand/MAED-Code/activity
I would really like to clarify the contexts of MAED and FinPlan —
for my own interests at least. Maybe someone else working on
these codebases can help out too? Naomi, Will, perhaps?
with best wishes, Robbie
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Mark Howells
Sent: 22 April 2025 15:33
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Subject: Re: [openmod-initiative] Free as in beer demand, papers and teaching resources
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Taco Niet
Hi Mark, Robbie,
I think M Welsh has left the IAEA. V. Kapoor is currently doing a lot of the development at the IAEA, I think – maybe contact him instead.
Cheers,
Taco..
Ludwig Hülk
Hi open people,
I just added the two to the model factsheets:
https://openenergyplatform.org/factsheets/models/317/
https://openenergyplatform.org/factsheets/models/318/
Feel free to add additional information and improve the entries. (OEP Login required)
We just hit 270 energy related models in the registry.
In addition, the NFDI4Energy colleagues from Uni Freiburg (Inatech) have registered 52 Scenarios Bundles with over 100 scenarios:
https://openenergyplatform.org/scenario-bundles/main
Sidenote (Rant):
The curation of 3 model registries for our community makes no sense at all.
The initial “Open Models” page at the openmod forum has been used to develop a more detailed model factsheet at the OEP. Many people from the openmod at several workshops have been involved.
I suggest to make a final merge and deprecate the openmod-page.
The documentation on Wikipedia looks like an advertisement page. It highlights some models from a large and diverse community and it does not differentiate between frameworks and models.
Is the goal to display all existing open models on Wikipedia (>200)?
Ludwig
From: openmod-i...@googlegroups.com <openmod-i...@googlegroups.com>
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Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2025 7:43 PM
To: 'Mark Howells' <M.I.H...@lboro.ac.uk>; openmod-i...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Naomi Tan <N....@lboro.ac.uk>; William Usher <wus...@kth.se>; 'robbie....@posteo.de' <robbie....@posteo.de>
Subject: [External] RE: [openmod-initiative] Free as in beer demand, papers and teaching resources
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Robbie Morrison
Hello Ludwig, all
Sidenote (Rant):
The curation of 3 model registries for our community makes no sense at all.
To that list, you could add Wikidata — which also has
considerable merit for structured information of this type.
I do take your implied point about duplication of information and
effort. But there are also some nuances.
The initial “Open Models” page at the openmod forum has been used to develop a more detailed model factsheet at the OEP. Many people from the openmod at several workshops have been involved.
I suggest to make a final merge and deprecate the openmod-page.
Can you provide the URL? As lead‑admin on the forum, I am not
sure what you are referring to. I am happy to make some executive
edits to better reference to the OEP listings, but I need to
understand the issues a little better first.
The documentation on Wikipedia looks like an advertisement page. It highlights some models from a large and diverse community and it does not differentiate between frameworks and models.
Is the goal to display all existing open models on Wikipedia (>200)?
I guess the article you are citing is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_energy_system_models
Given that I wrote about 90% of that article, let me respond.
That page has had a total of 75k views with an average of 21 views per day. There is nothing else I do in terms of outreach that comes close to these kinds of numbers.
The goal of Wikipedia is not to be technically comprehensive, but to incrementally (or should that be accretively) provide useful information.
There is also a list of software on the
Talk page that could be usefully added:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Open_energy_system_models#Further_models
As for the terminology, I think "model" instead of "framework" is fine when dealing with non‑specialists. If you disagree, post to the Talk page and see what other Wikipedia editors think.
The OEP factsheets are clearly referenced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_energy_system_models#Further_information
Regarding project coverage, I chose
projects that I thought were representative and/or significant.
There is clearly a random element to my selections, but I try
not to be partisan. And the page is obviously incomplete.
Others can, of course, add material (a relatively infrequent event
thus far).
If anyone is concerned about the tone of
the article, again please post to the Talk page to allow the
Wikipedia community to discuss and correct.
I think the OEP listing and the Wikipedia article can happily coexist.
Note that the OSeMOSYS community has recently broken the three
links in the 'Modeling efforts by region' section. If I don't
hear otherwise (from Naomi perhaps), I'll transfer that
information to the openmod forum for future reference.
I am happy to hear what others may think in terms of both
maintaining listings and providing outreach in this general
context.
best wishes to all, Robbie
Ludwig Hülk
Hi Robbie,
Thank you for the detailed reply.
I noticed that you are the author and most active editor on the Wikipedia article.
Please know that my comment wasn’t intended as a personal critique.
The importance of Wikipedia for the outreach is clearly important.
That’s why I dislike the presentation of specific models, I would rather favor a higher level of modeling approaches and information.
I was referring to the openmod Wiki page: https://wiki.openmod-initiative.org/wiki/Open_Models
It had some recent additions and edits. It clearly is some duplication.
How do you think about the openmod Wiki? Most activity has been moved to the forum.
Until now, I wasn’t aware of https://opentools.globalpst.org/, yet another registry.
This somehow points in the same direction of my previous rant.
We are a relative small community of people in energy system modeling domain.
But there are several hundred models/frameworks.
This is an indicator, that the claim of open source to collaboratively work together does not work properly in the real world.
If there are more and more new open-source models, the duplication of work must be enormous.
I don’t have a solution for this, but would like to raise this topic.
We can also move this to a thread on the forum.
I would be very happy to hear some opinions, arguments or approaches from you people.
Best
Ludwig
From: Robbie Morrison <robbie....@posteo.de>
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2025 11:49 AM
To: openmod list <openmod-i...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Ludwig Hülk <Ludwig...@rl-institut.de>
Subject: [External] framework listings and outreach (was: Free as in beer demand ..)
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Hello Ludwig, all
Robbie Morrison
Hi Ludwig, all
I did not interpret your earlier comments as personal in any way. Regarding a modeling overview on Wikipedia, there is a page on energy modeling, which does admittedly lists some established projects. One problem with not including projects is that the content can become both arcane and difficult to write and maintain (at least given my language skills).
We live in a multipolar world in the sense that a number of modeling communities will form and evolve.
Another community under construction is that from the OSeMOSYS folk: https://forum.u4ria.org
One issue, as I see it, is the increasing push from science funders for outreach — though usually more focused on social and mainstream media engagement than on portals and communities. And the newer modeling think tanks (for want of a better descriptor) are also part of our landscape and need their place in the sun.
Regarding the openmod wiki, I suggested some time back that the wiki be retired but kept online. But those responsible preferred to keep it running. The underlying software is a decade stale.
I have also recommended that the openmod Twitter account be shuttered, but was met with similar sentiments.
For the record, the services run by the openmod are listed here: https://forum.openmod.org/t/1032
I don't see the proliferation of frameworks as especially
problematic, though not especially desirable either. But impaired
data interoperability — semantic, technical, and legal — certainly
provides challenges and also undermines open science. This topic
to be traversed
at the Bruegel event on 08 May 2025 — that could shape up to be
very interesting. Workflow tooling and deskilling are two other
emerging themes that could benefit from collaborative efforts.
Let's stay with the discussion here on this mailing list. But I will write a short summary for the forum and refer to this thread in due course.
Others should feel free to chip in ..
best, Robbie
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Christoph....@dlr.de
Hey Ludwig, Robbie and all,
I kind of see Ludwig’s point regarding duplication. At DLR, we also have a lot of model inventories that we need to keep up to date with regard to our models.
From this list I can add another inventory not mentioned yet:
https://landscape.lfenergy.org/?group=energy-related-open-source-project-ecosystem
Trying to merge these inventories might cause resistances and might not be possible at all.
Also, I think, that each list has a different scope and target audiences might also be a benefit: each list provides another entry point for new people to explore the impressively broad landscape of open source energy modelling.
Instead of trying to merge all the inventories:
@Robbie, maybe you could add a subsection to the Wikipedia article under section “See also” named something like “open source energy model inventories” and add links to the known inventories there?
@Robbie @Ludwig: You could both link to this new section from OEP and openmod-Wiki to allow new people to make the connections… à la “Did not find what you searched for? Check out this list of open source energy model inventories”
What do you think?
Kind regards,
Christoph
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Robbie Morrison
Hi Christoph, all
I just added the LF Energy listing to Wikipedia and bolded the
phrase "lists and databases":
I didn't follow your suggestion exactly
but I'm a bit obliged to follow the Wikipedia style guide
(Wikipedia probably has more policies than your average small
island state).
My earlier remark about using Wikidata for this purpose was not
completely frivolous either. 🙂
thanks for the feedback and with best wishes, Robbie
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