Balmorel Model

The Balmorel open source energy system model was released in 2001. It was developed with the purpose of getting an overview of the energy system – mainly with respect to electricity and district heating – in the light of the energy system liberalization trend in the European Union.

The modeling was done in GAMS (General Algebraic Modelling System) and coding was fairly general, allowing the model to be extended and applied with respect to energy system details as well as geography.

A description of the model may be found in “The Balmorel open source energy system model”, Energy Strategy Reviews, Volume 20, April 2018, Pages 26-34. The abstract of this paper is as follows:

“As the world progresses towards a cleaner energy future with more variable renewable energy sources, energy system models are required to deal with new challenges. This article describes design, development and applications of the open source energy system model Balmorel, which is a result of a long and fruitful cooperation between public and private institutions within energy system research and analysis. The purpose of the article is to explain the modelling approach, to highlight strengths and challenges of the chosen approach, to create awareness about the possible applications of Balmorel as well as to inspire to new model developments and encourage new users to join the community. Some of the key strengths of the model are the flexible handling of the me and space dimensions and the combination of opera on and investment optimisation. Its open source character enables diverse, worldwide applications for exploratory energy scenarios as well as policy analysis as the applications outlined demonstrate. The existing functionality and structural suitability for extensions make it a useful tool for assessing challenges of the ongoing energy transitions. Numerous model extensions have been developed as different challenges to the energy transition have arisen. One of these includes the op on of running the model with unit commitment. To meet new challenges, further development is needed and consequently the article outlines suggestions for future development, such as including transport of local biomass as part of the optimisation and speeding up the model.”

Additionally, more than 100 scientific papers applying Balmorel have been published. And the model has been applied to more than 20 countries.

The modelling capability in Balmorel may be extended by coupling with the OptiFlow model (previously also called OptiWaste), which provides further flexibility in the model representations. OptiFlow is currently an integrated part of Balmorel (an addon).

The codes for the Balmorel are available at GitHub https://github.com/balmorelcommunity.

Balmorel code: https://github.com/balmorelcommunity/Balmorel. Balmorel data: https://github.com/balmorelcommunity/Balmorel_data

For further information about the models, you may contact these people at The Technical University of Denmark: Rasmus Bramstoft at mail: rabpe@dtu.dk and Marie Münster at mail: maem@dtu.dk

For further information about commercialised engagements of the Balmorel model, you may contact the Danish company Ea Energy Analyses at mail: info@eaea.dk

Hans Ravn may be contacted at mail: hansaravn@aeblevangen.dk