Tom Brown's avatar

Tom Brown

@nworbmot.bsky.social

385 followers 256 following 116 posts

energy system modeller | professor TU Berlin | nworbmot.org | github.com/PyPSA | model.energy | openmod ally | he/him

Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Great news! Looking forward to hearing more 😃

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Here's the list of talks - it's really a great line up!

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Interested in open energy modelling with PyPSA? 🤔 🤓

Then join us on zoom on Monday 27th May for the 2nd user meeting, 1500 German time (CEST).

13 talks, every continent is represented!

(except Antarctica - we're working on that 🐧)

forum.openmod.org/t/2nd-pypsa-...

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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PyPSA offers commercial-grade functionality, easy customisability, easy deployment, no licence fees (WHAT did that PLEXOS licence cost???) and great community!

More on PyPSA here:

github.com/pypsa/pypsa

pypsa.readthedocs.io

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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PyPSA was already coupled to the IEA's Global Energy and Climate (GEC) Model for some of the analysis in the World Energy Outlook 2023, as well as our weather processing too atlite

iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ff3a1...

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Great to see the International Energy Agency (IEA) embrace #opensource energy modelling tool PyPSA

used for hourly modelling in their new report on future flexibility needs at different scales (hourly, seasonal, inter-annual)

#openmod #freethemodels

www.iea.org/reports/mana...

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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What would be the cost to keep production in Germany? If the H2 should come from Germany, then €6–18 billion yr−1, if the intermediate product is imported, then only €3–9 billion yr−1.

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Should countries like Germany outsource the production of green materials?

Just the hydrogen, the intermediate, or the full product?

This paper from @pik-potsdam.bsky.social has some answers!

Spoiler: outsourcing intermediate products saves most of costs, allows to keep higher value chain

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Reposted by Tom Brown

Reposted by Tom Brown

Alicia Wongel's avatar Alicia Wongel @aliciawongel.bsky.social
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If you want to build and run a PyPSA (pypsa.org) network with little programming knowledge, give Table PyPSA a try!
You can build the network from an Excel table, and it returns main outputs in an Excel table. Especially suitable for teaching and stylized analyses with limited network complexity.

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Software engineer looking to contribute towards the energy transition? 🌞🌬️🔋

Come to TU Berlin and develop PyPSA, one of the leading open energy system tools. PyPSA is used around the world to model our path to climate neutrality.

jobs.tu-berlin.de/en/job-posti...

Deadline: 15.3

Duration: 3 years

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Reposted by Tom Brown

Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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I agree, there are enough potential difficulties with the hydrogen route (delays to pipeline network, uncertainties around turbines, NOx abatement, efficiencies) that we need multi-pronged effort.

Not saying this is answer, but one of alternatives that could be considered:

bsky.app/profile/nwor...

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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...and if you you look at the last 9 years (graphic shows weekly averages) the hydrogen is used sparingly - it's mainly a wind+solar+battery+demand management story.

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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The difficult "kalte Dunkelflaute" is a rare thing, the wind has barely stopped blowing in the past month...

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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These spikes are a degeneracy in the solution space I think. The costs don't change when you remove them and the solver is just landing at a random point because there is no way to reduce costs further (since the HP needs to run on the expensive hours to meet space demand).

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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The colours are not so well separated, one is BEV charging, the other is hydrogen.

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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This model was tested over 8 years of historical data from 2015 onwards, including low wind year of 2016.

We've tested other models over 70 historical years, 2016 was one of worst :-).

I don't think the results would change significantly if we extended from 8 to 70 years.

bsky.app/profile/nwor...

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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"Future Germany with today's weather" site has experimental scenario with:

- 15 million additional heat pumps 🌡️

- 30 million battery electric passenger cars 🚘

- 100 TWh/a hydrogen demand 🫧

Here is a difficult week in January, a "kalte Dunkelflaute" 🥶

model.energy/future/html/...

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Reposted by Tom Brown

Costa Samaras's avatar Costa Samaras @costasamaras.bsky.social
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Ways that researchers can improve the likelihood their outputs will have policy impact include but are not limited to: • Don’t publish in a predatory/low-quality journal • Make work open access or otherwise available • Summarize findings in the title and abstract (please!) • Talk about the work

2 replies 25 reposts 66 likes

Reposted by Tom Brown

Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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"India’s Electricity Transition Pathways to 2050: Scenarios and Insights" 🇮🇳 🌞 🌬️

Another excellent report from TERI using PyPSA, congratulations Neshwin Rodrigues, A.K. Saxena, Shubham Thakare, Raghav Pachouri, and G. Renjith!

teriin.org/policy-brief...

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Reposted by Tom Brown

Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf 's avatar Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf @rahmstorf.bsky.social
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Corals have a critical temperature tolerance - a 'tipping point' that coral and climate experts have warned about for many years. Sadly, the warnings have come true, many of the world's reefs are dying from heat stress. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

5 replies 85 reposts 142 likes

Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Yes definitely, the underlying framework PyPSA is already used in many different countries:

pypsa.readthedocs.io/en/latest/us...

This "live" tool can be adapted easily to other countries too - probably we will extend it across Europe unless someone else gets there first :-).

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Thanks Philippe! If we use any of it we will check with her whether to cite the thesis or new paper.

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Reposted by Tom Brown

Matthias Deutsch's avatar Matthias Deutsch @matthiasdeutsch.bsky.social
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1/ #Hydrogen distribution options for 🇩🇪 2035 -
new analysis by Fh-IEG @fraunhofer.bsky.social in the context of the HySupply project.

Underlying premise:
Germany will need to import considerable volumes of hydrogen or derivatives to become climate-neutral.
…

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Reposted by Tom Brown

Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Capacities and hydrogen values are determined roughly by a long-term capacity expansion, then rounded up by 5-10% to compensate myopia. The system LCOE includes load-shedding; the hydrogen value I put higher (100 rather than 80 €/MWh) for NoWind to get rough cost recovery for this higher LCOE case.

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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The thesis is very nice, exactly along the lines we've been thinking. Is there a published paper of that part on the marginal storage values?

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Yes, it was one of the things I was thinking of implementing! But maybe a very non-linear dependence, getting very high below 5% (as trade-offs with load shedding become more apparent). I'll look at the thesis, thanks for the tip!

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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In particular: - Allowing connection to Germany's neighbours would help balance variations, reducing costs and storage needs - Including new demands like heat pumps and electric vehicles will raise both total electricity demand and peak demand We'll add these features soon!

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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We also provide different scenarios with e.g. less wind and more solar, and even no wind at all as a thought experiment. Here is only 100 GW onshore and 20 GW offshore wind (with more solar and storage than the default scenario).

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Prices here only drop to zero when supply is larger than all flexible demand. The mean electricity price is 82 €/MWh, which allows almost all cost recovery of the system cost 93 €/MWh. Hydrogen turbines don't cover all their investment costs (usual missing money problem).

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Hydrogen storage is dispatched using a constant hydrogen value of 80 EUR/MWh (LHV). Like how water values are used to dispatch hydroelectricity systems today. The hydrogen value influences electricity prices when hydrogen turbines supply power, and when electrolysers consume.

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Hydrogen storage is dispatched on a roughly seasonal basis, filling up in the summer, depleting in the winter (like gas today). Note that full power-to-hydrogen-to-power storage systems don't yet exist at scale, and more development is needed for hydrogen turbines to get the NOx emissions down.

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Batteries are used to bridge generation gaps of a few hours, while hydrogen bridges multiple days of low wind and solar as well as managing seasonal differences.

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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Extra renewable generation is needed to cover the storage losses (batteries have round-trip efficiency of ~90% in the model, hydrogen just 39%). This you can see by the share of each technology in the load.

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Tom Brown's avatar Tom Brown @nworbmot.bsky.social
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We have run this simulation one day at a time with 24 hours foresight over 9 years of data since 2015. Here are weekly averages where you see more solar + electrolysis in summer, more wind + hydrogen-to-power in winter.

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