10.14768/20191105001.1
Tantet, Alexis
Alexis
Tantet
École Polytechnique
Centre national de la recherche scientifique
The Energy for CLimate Integrated Model
ESPRI/IPSL
2019
e4clim is an open-source Python software developed to integrate multiscale flexibility needs associated with Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) in the development and evaluation of regional energy mix scenarios. The software is designed to provide a flexible and extensible tool to the research and engineering community, and for educational and outreach missions. It aims at (i) evaluating and optimizing energy deployment strategies with high shares of VRE; (ii) assessing the impact of new technologies and of climate variability on mixes; (iii) conducting sensitivity studies. Together, the following aspects are specific to e4clim. First, to limit the complexity of the algorithm, we avoid solving a cost-minimization problem for the full energy mix by conducting a mean-variance analysis whereby the mean and the variance of the renewable production-demand ratio are taken together as proxies to flexibility services needed to match the demand. Second, observations of VRE technologies being typically too short to integrate the impact of climate variability and change, or nonexistent for new technologies, the demand and production are estimated from climate time series and fitted to available observations. Moreover, daily-mean climate data can be used thanks to stochastic parameterizations of hourly fluctuations. The software includes the implementation of particular case studies and an extensive documentation. Contributions are welcomed.