New open-access review paper on municipal energy system models
The Chair wants to congratulate Febin Kachirayil, who has published a review paper on municipal energy system models in the journal Applied Energy, as the first paper in his PhD.
The paper is motivated by the fact that the electrification of heating, cooling and transportation to reach decarbonization targets calls for a rapid expansion of renewable technologies. Due to their decentral and intermittent nature, these technologies require flexibility options to be integrated effectively and robust planning that considers non-technical constraints.
This study reviews 116 case studies of local, integrated energy system models to identify best-practice approaches to model flexibility and address non-technical constraints.
Storage systems and sector coupling most frequently provide flexibility within the sample while social aspects are either completely neglected or modeled exogenously.
Five best practices are identified to guide future modeling:
1. Modeling electric vehicles with flexible charging
2. Identifying and modeling explicit loads for DSM
3. Modeling storage with more constraints
4. Introducing actor heterogeneity
5. Reporting a broader range of metrics
The paper is open access and can be read and downloaded external page here.