openmod initiative main homepage
Energy models are widely used for policy advice and research. They serve to answer questions on energy policy, decarbonization, and transitions towards renewable energy sources. Yet, most energy models are black boxes – even to fellow researchers. This is what we want to change. We are a group of modellers from various universities and research institutes who want to promote open energy modelling. We believe that Open Source models and Open Data will advance knowledge and lead to better energy policies. Our mission is to enable Open Source energy modelling by providing a platform for collaboration as well as tools along the full value chain of energy economics and energy system models. That is why we founded the Open Energy Modelling Initiative (openmod initiative) just a year ago. You are welcome to join us for our next workshop!
After two extremely fruitful and encouraging workshops in Berlin (Sept 2014, April 2015), we will have our next workshop in London with an even more international focus. The aim is to give researchers a chance to present their own contributions to the field of open energy modelling and data, as well as to provide a forum to exchange ideas and work on concrete projects of the openmod initiative and more generally in the field of open energy modelling and data.
In order to sign up, please register on the Wiki, scroll all the way down to the participant list and add yourself. Please also feel free to add an idea for a presentation to the list below or propose break out sessions. Finally, please join our mailing list to receive updates.
3rd Open Energy Modelling Workshop
London, Imperial College
10/11 September 2015
Imperial College, Royal School of Mines Building
Map: https://goo.gl/maps/zZu3T
Begin: Thursday (10 September) 10.00
End: Friday (11 September) 16:00
Registration deadline: 10th August 2015
Accommodation option: Imperial College student halls of residence can be booked as a bed and breakfast.
The workshop is hosted by the Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment.
Ideas for Presentations
If you would like to make a presentation at the workshop, please add your name and proposed title to the list below. All suggestions are welcome!
- High Quality Wind Data for Energy Systems Models: Bias Correction and EU-wide Validation (Iain Staffell)
- Renewables.ninja - an open access platform for solar and wind simulations (live walkthrough, Q&A) (Stefan Pfenninger)
- The DESSTINEE Model for Demand for Energy Services, Supply and Transmission of Electricity IN EuropE, a simple open-source excel model for performing EU-wide electricity market simulations (Iain Staffell)
- Using reanalysis data to design optimal portfolios of renewable energies for Brazil (Johannes Schmidt)
- urbs and rivus, two energy system optimisation models based on the Python/Pyomo/Pandas stack. One year of development and (new) user experiences.
- The design of NEMO, an open source electricity modelling tool (Ben Elliston, remote presentation)
- Presentation of the open source network model SciGRID: lessons learned so far (Wided Medjroubi, NEXT ENERGY)
- Introduction and lessons learned from the development of Tools for Energy Model Optimization and Analysis (Temoa), or uncertainty analysis with Temoa (Joe DeCarolis, likely remote)
- Brief Overview of the LEAP software system. LEAP is a software tool for integrated energy planning and climate change mitigation scenario analysis used by a few thousand people in 190+ countries (http://www.energycommunity.org). NB: LEAP is not open source yet but I am considering making it so in the future and would really value hearing the experience and wisdom of this group. Charlie Heaps - LEAP Developer - Stockholm Environment Institute.
Ideas for break-out-groups
If you would like to discuss a topic at the workshop, please add your name and proposed theme to the list below. Please feel free to add to existing topics or suggest your own - all suggestions are welcome!
- Next generation climate models: applying higher resolution and future simulated time series to interesting energy problems
- What modelling groups / data sets are there?
- What can and can't be answered with these?
- Establish a conference on (open) energy system modeling
- Possibility of organising an Openmod session at the 2016 London Energy Systems conference (Iain)
- Renewables.ninja hackathon (Stefan / Iain)
- What other simulation modules could be added to Renewables.ninja?
- What would people like to see / could they add (e.g. hydro resource, electricity demand, high resolution heat and transport demand, temperature, heating and cooling degree days, etc.)
- Use of models in government (ideally someone from DECC / Ofgem)
- What are government agencies looking for?
- How to get open models into government processes - what is preventing their uptake?
- Curation and maintenance of volumnous cost and performace data for technologies and processes
- Assured and documented quality control of input data is needed for any government policy work. For thousands of processes, this is a very big task indeed.
- Non-data assumptions (and representation issues for any indiuvidual model) also need to be curated and maintained when results are going to be used for policy
- Use of models in industry (Catalina Spataru)
- Wiki model factsheet: which models are good for which task? (anybody interested in leading this?)
- We have a growing list of models - can we create a guide on picking a model, for users that are looking to solve a specific problem?
- Weather data for energy modelling (Iain)
- Bring together meteorologists who produce reanalyses and those who use this data for energy systems models
- Brainstorm new applications or big questions that can be answered with this (perhaps with the aim of a joint paper / proposal)
- Modelling energy storage and demand-side response (Paul D)
- Probably the most difficult set of technologies to model and understand
- Generally modelled badly or not at all by energy system models
- DSR is ignored by many models
- Wind capacity potentials
- Assess different open land usage databases
- Free software (QGIS etc.) for determining suitability of sites for wind development (distance from buildings, exclusion of nature reserves, etc.)
- Predicting where wind will be built based on e.g. resource-dependent feed-in tariffs
- Modelling hydroelectricity
- Incorporating precipitation and snow melt weather data
- Models for run-of-river, storage dams with inflow, pumped storage and mixed variants
- Getting Scandinavian/Alpine hydro markets right
- Open Access Publishing in the field of energy system modeling
- Are there any good possibilities
- Sharing experiences
- Possibilities to launch an own new fully open access journal?
- Pushing the open energy modeling article forward
- Modelling demand curves for other energy sectors: electrified heating/cooling and transport
- Open modelling of heat pump/electrical heating/air conditioning demand based on temperature data
- Modelling of transport demand
Realising you may have already discussed these topics in past workshops (sorry!), but I would like to hear discussed some of the following discussed [Charlie Heaps, SEI]:
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- What are the pros and cons of taking a currently closed source model to become open sourced? Most of our users are NOT programmers so we have focused on deveoping an API rather than on open sourcing. What suggestions do people have for this?
- What difficulties have others faced (especially those working in a RAD environment in which software consists of many plugin components).
- What are implications for revenue? We are a non profit org and have a business model where we give the software away for free to developing countries but charge to users in private companies and use the proceeds to pay for development and tech support. How might we replace that business model?
- If we go open source, how do we get people really engaged in the ongoing development of the model. What experience do people have of managing and combining inputs without causing fragmentation as has happened in some communities (eg the MARKAL community).
- Is it practical to go open source given that we use a programming language (Delphi) that is not as popular as it used to be?
- Modelling energy technology innovation and costs (Matt Hannon - Imperial)
- At present modellers typically use learning rates to calculate energy technology costs in the future. These normally assume a steady rate of learning and cost reduction.
- History teaches us that costs do not simply fall in a linear fashion. Instead costs can remain static for some time before they fall dramatically (e.g. PV) and some costs fall and then rise (e.g. nuclear, onshore wind).
- This is a function of numerous developments e.g. level of innovation support, externalities like energy prices, changes in customer preferences etc.
- A clearer understanding of how energy technology unfolds will help modellers more accurately accomodate for energy technology innovation and costs within their scenarios. This raises questions of which communities modellers should be working more closely with? e.g. innovation studies, sustainability transitions, engineers etc.
Energy modelling for beginners (Matt Hannon - Imperial)
Energy modelling has in the last 5-10 years become very popular, resulting in high levels of funding and the establishment of new modelling teaching initiatives, especially at MSc level
There is a significant proportion of the energy research community, mainly the more qualitatively focused, who have not had the opportunity to be formally trained in energy modelling but would like to learn more to: a) be able to do some modelling themselves and b) have constructive, inter-disciplinary conversations with the modelling community.
I propose a discussion about a 'modelling for beginners' initiative, focused particularly on PhD, post-doc and mid-career researchers who want to become familiar with basic modelling tools in a quick and easy to understand fashion
A week-long summer school, immediately before or after a future OpenMod workshop, might be suitable where a handful of expert modellers are hired to deliver complementary sessions. See Utrecht Summer School for example.
Break out groups from last workshop
Some of these groups may wish to continue based on the outcomes from the last workshop:
Participants
Registration deadline: 10th August 2015
- Stefan Pfenninger (Imperial College London)
- Lion Hirth (neon)
- Ingmar Schlecht (University of Basel)
- Iain Staffell (Imperial College Business School)
- Richard Green (Imperial College Business School)
- Johannes Dorfner (Technische Universität München)
- Clemens Gerbaulet (Technische Universität Berlin) (participation likely)
- Johannes Schmidt (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences BOKU, Vienna)
- Ed Sharp (University College London)
- Catalina Spataru (University College London)
- Mark Barrett (University College London)
- Graeme Hawker (profile) (University of Strathclyde)
- Warren Hicks (Reading University)
- Alejandro Dávila (university of Groningen)
- Adrien Schwane (Forschungszentrum Jülich)
- Jörn Richstein (TU Delft, participation likely)
- Alice Gunn (University of Reading)
- Abhishek Shivakumar (KTH)
- Tom Brown (from October: Frankfurt Institute of Advanced Studies)
- Paul Dodds (University College London, participation probably on only one day)
- James Price (UCL)
- David Kleinhans (NEXT ENERGY, participation likely)
- Wided Medjroubi (NEXT ENERGY)
- Carsten Matke (NEXT ENERGY)
- Daniel Drew (University of Reading)
- Francesco Gardumi (Politecnico di Milano)
- Daniel Crow (Imperial College)
- Simon Tindemans (Imperial College)
- Guido Pleßmann (Reiner Lemoine Institut [someone else of the institute])
- Verena Viskovic (University College London)
- Daniel Huppmann (DIW Berlin)
- Martin Jahn (Europa-Universität Flensburg)
- Wolf-Dieter Bunke (Europa-Universität Flensburg)
- Joe DeCarolis (NC State University; likely to join via remote link)
- Philip Sandwell (Imperial College London)
- Philip Sargent (DECC: Dept. of Energy and Climate Change)
- Frank Obermüller (ewi ER&S, Cologne)
- Koen van Dam (Imperial College London)
- Thomas Spitz (University of Edinburgh)
- Heidi Heinrichs (Forschungszentrum Jülich)
- Sheridan Few (Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College London)
- Florian Steiner (Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College London)
- Ajay Gambhir (Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College London)
- Sylvain Quoilin (Joint Research Center, EU Commission)
- Vignesh Sridharan (KTH)
- Juan Camilo Herrera (University College London)
- Shai Hassid (University College London)
- Arnaud Koehl (University College London)
- Seán Collins (University College Cork)
Waiting list:
- Charlie Heaps (Stockholm Environment Institute and Tufts University, Boston, MA)
- Moritz Schillinger (University of Basel)
- Rembrandt Koppelaar (Imperial College London)
- ...add your name here... Waiting-list is open: just register with this wiki and click edit on this page.
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