Welcome to oemof-flexmex’s documentation!

Overview

oemof-flexmex is a sector-integrated multi-node energy system model featuring a lot of flexibility options. Its region, interconnections and components can be adapted flexibly.

oemof-flexmex builds upon the open energy modeling framework oemof, which is an open source, modular toolbox for building energy system models. It hosts different libraries for different purposes. This model, oemof-flexmex, uses oemof.solph for linear optimisation and oemof.tabular for the handling of input data.

The model has been developed in the context of the model comparison project FlexMex. The project is now completed and the model is no longer maintained.

Energy system

In oemof-flexmex an energy system can be composed of

  • demands and supplies

  • a variety of energy transformers and storages (such as power plants, batteries, renewable energy plants)

  • transmission lines, pipelines

Just as its core, oemof-solph, oemof-flexmex is flexible in modelling different energy carriers, such as electricity, heat, gas or hydrogen. It also allows for defining your own components with the help of oemof.tabular.facades.

Regions

Each energy system is separated into regions. Regions can be independent from each other (resulting in a number of isolated energy systems) or linked by transmission lines or pipelines (resulting in a network of energy systems). Timeseries for demand and supply can be applied to each region seperately.

Scenarios

In oemof-flexmex, each scenario defines its own energy system which can include different energy carriers (or sectors), primary energy sources, conversion, storage, transmission and demand. All scenarios are provided with the same set of input data, which consists out of parameters (e.g. capacities) and timeseries (e.g. energy demand or hourly capacity factors for renewable energies). Thus, the scenarios help to model different flexibility options within a given energy system.

Getting started

Using oemof-flexmex

Installing the latest (dev) version

Clone oemof-flexmex from github:

git clone git@github.com:modex-flexmex/oemof-flexmex.git

Now you can install your local version of oemof-flexmex using pip:

pip install -e <path/to/oemof-flexmex/root/dir>

Requirements

  1. To use oemof-solph, the core of oemof-flexmex, a LP/MILP solver must be installed. To use the CBC solver install the coinor-cbc package:

    apt-get install coinor-cbc

    cbc is the default solver. If you chose a different solver, you need to adapt it in oemof_flexmex/optimization.py.

  2. oemof-flexmex needs oemof-tabular for data preprocessing. Please install the dev version from github rather than installing from PyPi/pip.

    git clone https://github.com/oemof/oemof-tabular.git
cd oemof-tabular/
git checkout dev
pip install -e ./

(for further installing issues and their solution, see https://github.com/modex-flexmex/oemo-flex/issues/12)

Required data

Not provided with the github repository:

This data is planned to be published at a later point in time by the project FlexMex.

Contributing to oemof-flexmex

The project FlexMex, for which this model has been built, is completed and the model is no longer maintained. You are welcome to contribute to a different project within the oemof community.

Model pipeline

Data processing in oemof-flexmex is divided into 4 main steps:

  • preprocessing

  • inferring

  • optimization

  • postprocessing

The workflow is managed using the workflow management tool snakemake. Each of the 4 steps is represented by a snakemake rule in the Snakefile, which runs the script of the same name.

The data each step is provided with is held in different forms:

  • raw data

  • preprocessed data

  • optimization results

  • postprocessed results

Raw data

The raw data holds the energy system model definition for all scenarios. It consists of a parameter database (parameters are called scalars) and a bunch of timeseries (sequences or profiles).

The data is expected to be CSV-formatted and is read from data/In. The format of timeseries and scalars is described below.

Note

Raw data for FlexMex is not part of the oemof-flexmex github repository but can be provided by the FlexMex project partners.

Scalars

The scalars database defines parameters for all scenarios and regions. It is held in a CSV file called Scalars.csv.

The following table shows the first lines of an example Scalars.csv and its format:

Scenario

Region

Year

Parameter

Unit

Value

FlexMex1

ALL

ALL

Energy_SlackCost_Electricity

Eur/GWh

50000000

FlexMex1

ALL

ALL

Energy_SlackCost_Electricity

Eur/GWh

5000000

ALL

ALL

ALL

Energy_SlackCost_Heat

Eur/GWh

1000000

ALL

ALL

ALL

Energy_SlackCost_H2

Eur/GWh

1000000

FlexMex1

AT

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_Cooling

MW (el)

248

FlexMex1

BE

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_Cooling

MW (el)

584

FlexMex1

CH

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_Cooling

MW (el)

183

FlexMex1

CZ

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_Cooling

MW (el)

275

FlexMex1

DE

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_Cooling

MW (el)

2950

FlexMex1

DK

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_Cooling

MW (el)

391

FlexMex1

FR

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_Cooling

MW (el)

3361

FlexMex1

IT

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_Cooling

MW (el)

2304

FlexMex1

LU

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_Cooling

MW (el)

58

FlexMex1

NL

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_Cooling

MW (el)

947

FlexMex1

PL

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_Cooling

MW (el)

1497

FlexMex1

AT

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_HVAC

MW (el)

964

FlexMex1

BE

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_HVAC

MW (el)

2144

FlexMex1

CH

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_HVAC

MW (el)

1027

FlexMex1

CZ

2050

DemandResponse_Capacity_Electricity_HVAC

MW (el)

1117
Scenario: string

Special identifier to address scenario or group of scenarios (‘experiment’)

Note

The keyword ALL can be used as a universal quantifier to avoid repetition.

Region: string

Region identifier

Note

The keyword ALL can be used as a universal quantifier to avoid repetition.

Year: integer

Year

Warning

Years support is not fully implemented!

Parameter: string

The parameter name used in the FlexMex project. This is mapped via preprocessing to the components parameters.

Unit: string

Unit of measurement of the given value

Warning

Unit support is incomplete! Especially, there is no check for unit equivalence nor any automatic unit conversion!

Value: float

Value of the parameter

Timeseries

Timeseries in oemof-flexmex assign a value to every hour of the year (1…8760). They are held in CSV files with one time index-value pair per line and one timeseries per file.

Warning

The time index is ignored at the moment. It will be overwritten by a pandas datetimeindex.

The paths to the timeseries are defined in flexmex_config/mapping-input-timeseries.yml per component. If a component has no timeseries defined here, an info line is added to the log output.

The found filenames are interpreted according to the following pattern:

{experiment name}_{region code}_{year}.csv

Note

Experiment name and year are ignored at the moment.

The following table shows the first lines of an exemplary time series csv file for heat demand in Austria, which is stored as data/In/Energy/FinalEnergy/Heat/FlexMex1_AT_2050.csv.

timeindex

load

1

0.000213222

2

0.000214263

3

0.0002161

4

0.000221314

5

0.000228666

And here is the corresponding entry in mapping-input-timeseries.yml:

heat-demand:
    profiles:
        heat-demand:
            input-path: Energy/FinalEnergy/Heat

Preprocessing

Preprocessing brings the raw data into the oemof.tabular format. In this step, scalars belonging to a component are mapped to the components model parameters and saved within an input CSV file. Timeseries are attached in a similar way. The so formed input data is held in a datapackage format comprising a JSON schema file (meta data) and the CSV files containing the actual data.

Inferring

Optimization

Optimization is performed by oemof-solph. Specifically, with the help of oemof.tabular, an EnergySystem is created from the data package created in preprocessing.

Postprocessing

Postprocessing translates the results into an exchange-friendly format defined by the FlexMex project partners. For that, a result template defines the output parameters for each scenario. The oemof-flexmex-internal parameters are recalculated and mapped to the FlexMex parameter names.

The results template is provided by the FlexMex project partners. It consists of an output directory structure and a scaffold Scalars.csv output file (with no values). It should be placed in the path:

flexmex_config/output_template/

The mapping is read from the two CSV files:

flexmex_config/mapping-output-scalars.csv
flexmex_config/mapping-output-timeseries.yml

Model structure

Model structure

The model structure defines the format of the preprocessed data which is ready to be optimized by oemof.

Elements

All busses are defined in oemof_flexmex/results/scenario/01_preprocessed/data/elements/bus.csv.

The preprocessed component data is also stored in oemof_flexmex/results/scenario/01_preprocessed/data/elements

The filenames for the components are of the form

{carrier}-{tech}.csv

(e.g. electricity-demand.csv, gas-bpchp.csv).

The first columns of the component scalars file are similar in all of the files. They contain the following information:

  • region: Region of a component. Modelled regions are defined here

  • name: Unique name ('region-carrier-tech', eg. 'LU-gas-bpchp', 'AT-electricity-airsourcehp')

  • type: Type of oemof.tabular.facade

  • carrier: Energy sector according to carrier (e.g. solar, wind, biomass, coal, lignite, uranium, oil, gas, methane, hydro, waste, electricity, heat).

  • tech: Specification of the technology (e.g. pv, onshore, offshore, battery, demand, curtailment, shortage, transmission, ror, st, ocgt, ccgt, extchp, bpchp)

Following these columns, the attributes for the respective components are defined. The number and kind of attributes varies between components.

Sequences

The input timeseries are combined into a new set of CSV files, with one file per technology. The preprocessed sequences are stored in

results/{scenario name}/01_preprocessed/data/sequences/{technology}_profile.csv

The filenames are of the form

<carrier>-<tech>_<profile>.csv

(e.g. wind-offshore_profile.csv, electricity-demand_profile.csv).

Each sequence file contains the hourly profile of all the regions, organized in rows. They are indexed by a pandas datetimeindex. The column names have the structure {region}-{technology}-profile.

Available components

These components are available in oemof-flexmex.

name

path

description

electricity-demand

component_attrs/electricity-demand.csv

Electricity demand

heat-shortage

component_attrs/heat-shortage.csv

Shortage backup to keep model solvable

electricity-shortage

component_attrs/electricity-shortage.csv

Shortage backup to keep model solvable

electricity-transmission

component_attrs/electricity-transmission.csv

Electrical transmission between regions

solar-pv

component_attrs/solar-pv.csv

Solar pv capacities

wind-offshore

component_attrs/wind-offshore.csv

Offshore wind capacities

wind-onshore

component_attrs/wind-onshore.csv

Onshore wind capacities

electricity-curtailment

component_attrs/electricity-curtailment.csv

Curtailment of non-dispatchable electricity

ch4-gt

component_attrs/ch4-gt.csv

Open cycle gas turbine gas turbine capacities (natural gas driven)

uranium-nuclear-st

component_attrs/uranium-nuclear-st.csv

Nuclear power plant capacities (steam turbine)

ch4-bpchp

component_attrs/ch4-bpchp.csv

Backpressure turbine CHP

ch4-boiler-small

component_attrs/ch4-boiler.csv

Peak load boiler

ch4-boiler-large

component_attrs/ch4-boiler.csv

Peak load boiler

ch4-extchp

component_attrs/ch4-extchp.csv

Extraction turbine CHP

electricity-pth

component_attrs/electricity-pth.csv

Resistive heater (Power-to-Heat)

heat-demand

component_attrs/heat-demand.csv

Heat demand

electricity-h2_cavern

component_attrs/electricity-h2_cavern.csv

Large scale H2 storage

electricity-liion_battery

component_attrs/electricity-liion_battery.csv

Li-ion battery storage

electricity-heatpump-small

component_attrs/electricity-heatpump.csv

Airsource compression heatpump

electricity-heatpump-large

component_attrs/electricity-heatpump.csv

Airsource compression heatpump

heat-storage-small

component_attrs/heat-storage.csv

Small sensible heat storage

heat-storage-large

component_attrs/heat-storage.csv

Large scale sensible heat storage

heat-excess

component_attrs/heat-excess.csv

Heat excess

hydro-reservoir

component_attrs/hydro-reservoir.csv

Hydro reservoir

electricity-bev

component_attrs/electricity-bev.csv

Battery electric vehicle

Component attributes

The component’s attributes are defined in separate csv files contained in oemof-flexmex/model_structure/component_attrs/

Extra parameters

tabular supports handing over extra output_parameters and input_parameters to the components’ classes. These have to be given as dict’s in the corresponding CSV field. If you want to pass more than two parameters:

  1. Enclose the dict with quotes and use double-quotes in it (less readable).

OR

  1. Make the CSV file semicolon-separated and separate the output_parameters and/or input_parameters with commas (better readable).

    More over, all component read_csv() function calls in preprocessing.csv must be adapted to the new separator (sep=';').

    See https://github.com/modex-flexmex/oemo-flex/issues/57 for details.

What’s New

These are new features and improvements of note in each release

Releases

v0.0.1 (2020)

First release.

Indices and tables