Getting feedback on the presentation of the group work on numerical modeling

Thanks a lot for the presentation of your model. It is a really, really nice example of keeping it simple. You had the initial idea, OK, we want to look at the future. We’re going to have renewables. We’re going to have storage. How do they interact? And that’s basically what you put in your model, those two elements. So let’s have a look at that. Let’s start with the renewable side. The basic question was, how much renewables we’re going to need? And as you said correctly, it’s about investments. It’s about deciding how much we’re going to have in those fixed costs elements because they don’t have variable ones. So that’s the first element of the objective you’re going to need.

Then you correctly said, well, renewables, they’re going to depend on the weather. So it’s basically externally defined how much renewables we’re going to have in terms of production in each period. And that’s done naturally related with the demand side, which is given and fixed. So you want to minimise the cost given that demand level. So that’s a simple production side of the game, quite similar to the example we had on the optimisation model. Now there’s the second part, which is the storage in that game. And it’s basically the same. The question is, how much storage are we actually needing to compliment the renewables? And well, again, we’re going to need the capacity constraint.

So how much storage we want to have? So we need to define the maximum level. That’s the investment decision, you take up there. And down here, that’s the really, really complicated element of your model. But in the end, it’s not so complicated because you relate form a storage with the current storage. But just saying, well, what’s the difference between the periods? Well the difference is, how much do I produce and how much do I consume? And that’s going to be positive or negative depending on whether or not I have too much or too little renewables. And that’s the relation between the storage and the production side.

It’s really nice because it’s boiled down to the simplest elements you’re going to need. And you even have further steps and further ideas. So taking that simple model and extending it. And as you said, well there are different options for renewable production. So we just include different technologies. Storage going to have an efficiency level. So most likely we’re going to lose some energy when we store it. So it’s the trade off between producing now or producing later out of the storage. So we’re going to include an efficiency level. And you can think ahead and say, well if we include different technologies for renewables, we can also include different technologies for storage.

And that shows nicely how you can take a really, really simple model, in the first step, extend it gradually to include further elements of reality and come up with a much more sophisticated solution in the end, but still have something you can easily trace in the beginning. So I think it’s a really, really nice example of a good model. Thanks a lot.