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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Spine (Open source toolbox for modelling integrated energy systems)

Teaser

Summary

Secure and affordable energy production is critical for modern societies, but energy production is also responsible for a large portion of the greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. Wind power and solar power can produce energy without on-site emissions, but they are variable sources of electricity. Consequently, there is a pressing need to better understand how that variable electricity can replace fossil fuel based energy generation in all sectors of economy. That analysis can be improved with new kinds of tools where different energy sectors (power, heating, cooling, industries, and transport) are analyzed together.

The main objective of the Spine project is to develop and validate an end-to-end energy modelling toolbox that will enable open, practical, flexible and realistic planning of future European energy grids. The Spine Toolbox will have partially automated data retrieval and validation of both input and output data, enabling users to focus on core modelling tasks. The Spine Modelâ€™s flexibility in terms of temporal, geographical, technological and sectoral dimensions will allow integrated analyses in several levels of the energy grids. These features will make Spine Toolbox state-of-the-art in energy system modelling, and allow grid operators, energy producers and researchers to carry out analyses that are not possible with current modelling systems.

Work performed

During the first 18 months of the project, Spine has designed a generic data structure that enables combining different data sources and models efficiently. Spine has also build the first version of Spine Toolbox, which implements the generic data structure and creates interfaces to different modelling environments - currently supporting mathematical programming language Julia where Spine Model is being built. Spine Model is a generic energy systems model that, at this stage, can perform basic energy system optimizations and is ready to be expanded. Both tools are available for download as open source (https://github.com/Spine-project). Spine project has also built data processing tools for meteorological data and for power systems data. The first case studies, that also help to build Spine Toolbox and Spine Model, are underway.

Final results

Ever improving computational capability is making previously computationally unfeasible models attainable. Consequently, a better temporal representation is now possible for a full energy system model. However, it is very easy to increase the problem dimensions to the extent that the model becomes computationally infeasible especially in large geographical footprint such as Europe. What is needed is a tool where different levels of representation in temporal, spatial and technological dimensions can be easily achieved. In this way, it will be possible to seek the least harmful trade-offs between accuracy and computational resource use. Also, the model should be scalable in order to utilize supercomputers once the data, model and scenarios are mature enough for the purpose. To our knowledge such flexibility and scalability is not present in existing energy system models, let alone in open source energy system models.

At the end of the project, Spine Toolbox and Spine Model should be advanced tools for energy systems modelling with a growing community of developers and users. The new tools will allow addressing energy related challenges at a new level of fidelity and efficiency. The case studies that will be performed in the Spine project will shed light on some of the pressing concerns related to climate targets, energy markets, system stability and power grid planning, as well as integration of wind and solar power.