marei-epmg/times-ireland-model

TIMES-Ireland Model (TIM)

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TIMES-Ireland Model (TIM)

Purpose of the model

The TIMES-Ireland Model (TIM) is being developed at UCC to inform future possible decarbonisation pathways for the Irish energy system. We give it information on the Irish energy system as it is today, a set of constraints, including on greenhouse-gas emissions, and the best available projections for what the future technology and fuel options and demands will be.

It then finds the lowest-cost pathway to re-architect and restructure Ireland’s entire energy system, for electricity, transport, industry, residential and commercial, and novel fuels like hydrogen and bioenergy, to reduce emissions to meet the target. It accounts for all the linkages in the system; rather than transform it one piece at a time, it transforms the entire system, accounting for all the sector couplings and trade-offs, even between distant parts of the system.

Rather than offering a single prescriptive plan, the model helps structure our discussions of the trade-offs and uncertainties; and helps us develop meaningful, consistent narratives of energy transformation, while considering a huge range of possible futures.

Alternatively, TIM can be used to assess the implications of certain policies, namely regulatory or technology target-setting (for example, biofuels blending obligation or sales/stock share target for electric vehicles).

Documentation

More information on the TIMES model generator and specific information about TIM can be found in the Documentation.

About the developers

The list of developers, contributors and reviewers is described in the Acknowledgements section.

TIM is the successor model to the Irish TIMES Model, which has been developed by the MaREI Energy Policy and Modelling Group (EPMG) at University College Cork since 2010 and funded through various projects by the EPA, SEAI, SFI and the NTR Foundation, and has played a significant role in informing the evidence base of Irish climate target setting.

Climate policy use

This model has been built to better inform increased national climate mitigation ambition: Ireland now has one of the most ambitious near-term decarbonisation targets in the world, with a new carbon budget process to underpin action. The new model also take into account the changing energy technology landscape, and of new advances in energy systems optimisation modelling techniques.

The first set of scenarios developed with TIM have explored the implications of alternative climate mitigation, technology and demand pathways. This analysis formed a significant part of the evidence base used by the Irish Climate Change Advisory Council to develop the first set of carbon budget recommendations.

• Zenodo repository of scenarios
• Web app visualising results from a selection of scenarios
• Presentation of TIM findings to Engineers Ireland, Nov 3^rd 2021.

Scenario descriptions

• No mitigation - No GHG constraint
• WAM - overall energy system GHG emissions contrained to the Environmental Protection Agency's "With Additional Measures" scenario
• CB - energy system GHG emissions are constrained to meet sectoral emissions ceilings.

Peer-reviewed publications

• TIM: modelling pathways to meet Ireland's long-term energy system challenges with the TIMES-Ireland Model (v1.0). 2022. Geoscientific Model Development.
• Low energy demand scenario for feasible deep decarbonisation: Whole energy systems modelling for Ireland. 2022. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition.
• Decarbonisation of passenger light-duty vehicles using spatially resolved TIMES-Ireland Model. 2022. Applied Energy.

times-ireland-model's Issues

Bioenergy supply

Bioenergy supply is not credible in several ways. Immediate increase of ethanol in 2023 from grass is not plausible - I suggest removing the technology entirely. Similar issue with biodiesel from woody biomass. I suggest removing these technologies and just fixing domestically-produced biodiesel, ethanol and biogas supply from the findings of the SEAI heat study: https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/national-heat-study/sustainable-bioenergy-for/

Update needed for LED scenario

Hi @ankitagaur93, @vahid-aryanpur ,
Could you please check and update the LED scenario to include all demand commodities? Below is a list of commodities that need to be updated/included:

RSDCD
RSDCK
RSDCW
RSDOA
RSDOE
RSDRF
TRAF
TRAPL

Thanks,
Bakytzhan

Include data download feature in new 2023 carbon budgets runs

Many thanks

Residential updates

• No DH going to apartments
• New dwellings by type - blip - ask Ankita
• Legends in new heating types need to be made much simpler

Dummies in TRA in 2018-2021

LED demands scenario requires an update

The current model version includes modification by @jayomacg in RSD which include dissaggregation of building stock by BER. @ankitagaur93 could you check how the INS table on the Residential sheet should be modified?

Start TIM "projects" on GitHub

CAPACITY, SELFS, other projects that developments are planned under

Review natural gas extraction

• Kinsale field was closed in 2020

Check woody biomass conversion to Biodiesel

Apply sectoral emissions ceilings

Sectoral emissions ceilings have been published: https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/76864-sectoral-emissions-ceilings/
Should we swap the EAM scenario for a scenario based on the ceilings, @daly-h @energynumbers ?

LPG in industry does not have a mitigation solution

Need mitigation option for LPG in industry.

Also it is unlikely to increase substantially in Services between 2023-2025 so quickly then disappear entirely.

Residential results analysis

The current residential results allow for biofuels, but there is an issue with solar not coming through. It might be due to new timeslices?
The residential thermal retrofits are now down as the biofuels are preferred in the residential sector over thermal retrofit plus electrical heat pump.

Service

• Check natural gas consumption from 2025-2030 - where is it coming from?
• Change carbon budget constraint for CB1 and CB2 to the entire period.

Solver options

Currently no solver settings/options are present. Should we add some?

Add hLED and LED scenarios, update transport

Introduce reserve requirements in power sector

Possibility to introduce peaking equation in TIMES to model peak reserve requirement in power sector (grid code)

Coal and peat in RES re-appear after 2030

Is this plausible?

Review SNSP limit modelling and data

EirGrid imposed maximum amount of variable renewable generation on the grid at a given time:

• 2018: 65% - https://www.eirgridgroup.com/newsroom/record-renewable-energy-o/index.xml
• 2021: 70% - https://www.eirgridgroup.com/how-the-grid-works/ds3-programme/
• 2022: 75% - https://www.eirgridgroup.com/newsroom/electricity-grid-to-run-o/index.xml

Graphs/ netlify - include process emissions explicitly

separate industry process emissions in the results graphics

Apply statistics for 2020-2021

CCS power plant costs and efficiencies

The efficiency of power plants with CCS should be lower than those without

Electricity updates

• Constrain 2023 and 2024 new capacity
• Contact SEAI to request new grid-scale solar and onshore wind energy capacity additions in 2024 (and 2025 if necessary)
• Check wind onshore from: https://windeurope.org/newsroom/news/ireland-makes-history-with-its-first-offshore-wind-auction/
• Change BECCS start date to 2030
• Electricity gets to net zero by 2030
• Look into differences with previous study - likely will need natural gas to 2035

Incorporate data centre narratives to LED

We previously had data centres reducing demand in LED - check with Ankita

Check Ambient Heat Flow Share

The share of ambient heat flow for heat pumps is slightly low, need to investigate. Ambient heat uses a auxiliary input

Transport updates

• In display change DMD_TRA-P-CAR-FCV to FCV
• Limit total new car/HGV/MGV/LGV sales to 50% higher than any previous year. Check there's no unmet demand as a result.
• Display vehicle activity by technology, or remove early retired vehicles
• Freight - deactivate new LNG trucks. Look at new freight sales and check what share is bio-CNG (in ICE and hybrid). May need to add growth constraints to factor in fuelling potential.
• Look into why FCVs are being added
• Check why transport demand jumps in 2024 - potential to reduce this
• What constraint is limiting EV sales from reaching 100%? I suggest allowing by 2025.

Review and update interconnectors

Add cumulative and unmitigated CO2 graph

Include policies in baseline

EU RED II, energy efficiency directive
Coal and peat through in residential sector

Modelling of multi-output technologies in RSD

I just happened to look at the model (Release 1.0.2), due to a post on the VEDA Forum, related to heat pumps modeling.

It seems to me that there may be a few mistakes related to the modeling of RSD multi-output tehnologies, in particular heat pumps.

• The efficiencies appear to be usually defined both for the RSDELC input and some of the ouput flows (example: R-HC_Apt_ELC_HPN2-AB). This means that the total efficiency of producing such an output will be the two efficiencies multiplied together, resulting in some cases in very high efficiencies. That makes me suspect that such may be a modeling mistake.
• The ambient heat input flow is defined by FLO_SHAR, where the reference CG is one of the ouput commodities. However, in some cases two or even several such FLO_SHAR are defined, which would generate a constraint for each of those shares (example: R-HC_Apt_ELC_HPN2-AB, with two such FLO_SHAR). That looks like a mistake again. I would suggest using FLO_EFF(r,y,p,NRGO,RSDAHT,ANNUAL) = 1 and FLO_EFF(r,y,p,RSDELC,RSDAHT,ANNUAL) = -1 to get RSDAHT correctly defined.
• The availablility factors of the multi-output tehnologies seem to be mostly defined by using NCAP_AFC (which is fine as such). However, in some cases both NCAP_AFC(ANNUAL) and NCAP_AFA are defined (example: R-HC_Apt_ELC_HPN2-AB). Please bear in mind that if both AFC and activity-based AFs are defined for the same timeslice, they are multiplied together (unless independent AFCs are used). It seems that both factors may have been used by mistake in the model, for example in the case of R-HC_Apt_ELC_HPN2-AB, where the AFC and AFA values are equal.

My apologies if these suspicions are just my misunderstandings. Feel free to close the issue immediately if it has no relevance (@olejandro @jayomacg).

Info messages in Veda2.0 v1.251

Veda2.0 v1.251 shows the following info messages (records deleted) after synchronisation:

• zero value for input/output in BASE for S-SH-PU_ELC-HP_X0, R-BLD_Apt, R-BLD_Att and R-BLD_Det
• commodity is invalid (input table Building stock B24 in VT_IE_SRV.xlsx and multiple commodities in counties, e.g. ELCD)

Updating vehicle stock for 2020-2023

Vehicle stock for the following categories should be updated:

• Private cars
• Heavy trucks
• Medium trucks
• Light trucks

Check energy requirements of new buildings

Attached buildings require 20 times less energy for heating than detached ones

Model infeasible

@vahid-aryanpur seems that the last adjustment in load factor for HGVs makes the model infeasible in 2018. I'll roll back those numbers for now.

RES wood bioenergy CO2 emissions intensity

Use SEAI value of zero rather than IPCC inventory

Review freight demand

Freight demand may be over-estimated

Update costs for BEVs and FCVs

Cap2Act parameter in modelling of residential technologies

Incorrect use of the cap2act parameter in residential sector technologies, especially for technologies with two inputs.

Municipal solid waste and general waste use as energy

Apply fixed split between renewable and non-renewable waste with emission coefficient, check other waste-related supply and end-use part

review onshore wind potential