Most of our modeling projects involve some incremental methodology advancements. Here are some projects that were specifically focused on methodology development:

  • Development of the TIMES energy environment model for ETSAP, under the aegis of the International Energy Agency. This major project was co-lead by Richard Loulou and Amit Kanudia, with collaborators from ENEA, DecisionWare, IER-Stuttgart and VTT. 1995-1999.
  • Stochastic Programming with risk aversion in TIMES
  • Implementation of the Minimax Regret criterion in large scale models
  • Game-theoretic solutions based on large scale energy-environment models
  • Development of a Climate Module for TIMES, KANLO project effected for ETSAP, in collaboration with University of Stuttgart and VTT (Finland), 2004-2005
  • Development of a coupling methodology between the TIAM energy model and the GEMINI-E3 Computable General Equilibrium model. This development took place as part of the EU sponsored TOCSIN project, in collaboration with ORDECSYS. It allows the user to take advantage of the specific strengths of the two paradigms embodied by the two models. 2008-2009.

 

Web Tools

Our primary models are extremely detailed. We believe that collaboration with a diverse set of region and sector experts is essential to unlock the full potential of these models. The main hurdle on this path is to have the results and input without the model jargon – so that any domain expert can easily relate to without losing time and energy in semantics.

We have been developing a web platform called DCM (Disseminating Complex Models) for the past few years, which has already enabled us to do a few collaborations of this type quite successfully. This is explained in a few slides here.

Further, we wish to build a portal that would enable a community of experts to view and comment on a wide range of results from various models.

 Some elements are already in use for multiple ongoing projects. We basically work with a set of post-processed output from the model. Mainly, Capacity, Activity and Flows by a few types of process/commodity at the primary/secondary/final levels. For example:

  • Primary
    • Coal supply
    • Nat gas imports
  • Scondary
    • electricity generation from wind
    • annual investments in solar power
  • Final
    • oil consumption in transport
  • Costs/prices
    • Electricity price
    • Total system cost

 Each of these Variables has the following dimensions:

  • Scenario
  • Region
  • Year

 For numerical/graphical presentation in 2-dimensional space, one has the following options:

  • Aggregation – sum across elements: this can work for variables and regions. It can work for year too, in some cases.
  • Enumeration on columns (or X axis): makes sense for all four dimensions.
  • Enumeration on rows (or series in a graph): makes sense for all four dimensions.
  • Make a separate table (or graph) for each element: makes sense for all four dimensions.

 

Numerical results are available in powerful cube format that can be exported to Excel.


Users can make their charts on the web


Trade results can be viewed on maps