---
title: "Open energy system models"
chunk: 2/16
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_energy_system_models"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:49:30.157219+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Surveys ===
A survey completed in 2021 investigated the degree to which open energy-system modeling frameworks support flexibility options, broken down by supply, demand, storage, sector coupled, and network response. Of the frameworks surveyed, none supported all types, which suggests that the soft coupling of complementary frameworks could provide more holistic assessments of flexibility. Even so, most candidates opt for perfect foresight and do not natively admit probabilistic actions or explicit behavioral responses.

== Electricity sector models ==
Open electricity sector models are confined to just the electricity sector. These models invariably have a temporal resolution of one hour or less. Some models concentrate on the engineering characteristics of the system, including a good representation of high-voltage transmission networks and AC power flow. Others models depict electricity spot markets and are known as dispatch models. While other models embed autonomous agents to capture, for instance, bidding decisions using techniques from bounded rationality. The ability to handle variable renewable energy, transmission systems, and grid storage are becoming important considerations.

=== AMIRIS ===

AMIRIS is the open Agent-based Market model for the Investigation of Renewable and Integrated energy Systems. The AMIRIS simulation framework was first developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in 2008 and later released as an open source project in 2021.
AMIRIS enables researchers to address questions regarding future energy markets, their market design, and energy-related policy instruments.
In particular, AMIRIS is able to capture market effects that may arise from the integration of renewable energy sources and flexibility options by considering the strategies and behaviors of the various energy market actors present. For instance, those behaviors can be influenced by the prevailing political framework and by external uncertainties. AMIRIS may also uncover complex effects that may emerge from the inter‑dependencies of the energy market participants.

The embedded market clearing algorithm computes electricity prices based on the bids of prototyped market actors. These bids may not only reflect the marginal cost of electricity production but also the limited information available to the actors and related uncertainties. But also the bidding can be strategic as an attempt to game official support instruments or exploit market power opportunities.
Actors in AMIRIS are represented as agents that can be roughly divided into six classes: power plant operators, traders, market operators, policy providers, demand agents, and storage facility operators. In the model, power plant operators provide generation capacities to traders, but do not participate directly in markets. Instead, they supply traders who conduct the marketing and deploy bidding strategies on the operators behalf. Marketplaces serve as trading platforms and calculate market clearing. Policy providers define the regulatory framework which then may impact on the decisions of the other agents. Demand agents request energy directly at the electricity market. Finally, flexibility providers, such as storage operators, use forecasts to determine bidding patterns to match their particular objectives, for instance, projected profit maximization.
AMIRIS is based on the open Framework for distributed Agent-based Modelling of Energy systems or FAME.
AMIRIS can simulate large‑scale agent systems in acceptable timeframes. For instance, the simulation of one year at hourly resolution may take as little as one minute on a contemporary desktop computer.

=== Breakthrough Energy Model ===

The Breakthrough Energy Model is a production cost model with capacity expansion algorithms and heuristics, originally designed to explore the generation and transmission expansion needs to meet U.S. states' clean energy goals. The data management occurs within Python and the DCOPF optimization problem is created via Julia. The Breakthrough Energy Model is being developed by the Breakthrough Energy Sciences team.
The open data underlying the model builds upon the synthetic test cases developed by researchers at Texas A&M University.
The Breakthrough Energy Model initially explored the generation and transmission expansion necessary to meet clean energy goals in 2030 via the building of a Macro Grid. Ongoing work adds and expands modules to the model (e.g. electrification of buildings and transportation) to provide a framework for testing numerous scenario combinations. Development of and integration with other open-source data sets is in progress for modeling countries and regions beyond the United States.
The model was applied subsequently the 2021 Texas power crisis, in which winter power outages resulted in hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in economic losses.

=== DIETER ===

DIETER stands for Dispatch and Investment Evaluation Tool with Endogenous Renewables. DIETER is a dispatch and investment model. It was first used to study the role of power storage and other flexibility options in a future greenfield setting with high shares of renewable generation. DIETER is being developed at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Berlin, Germany. The codebase and datasets for Germany can be downloaded from the project website. The basic model is fully described in a DIW working paper and a journal article. DIETER is written in GAMS and was developed using the CPLEX commercial solver.
DIETER is framed as a pure linear (no integer variables) cost minimization problem. In the initial formulation, the decision variables include the investment in and dispatch of generation, storage, and DSM capacities in the German wholesale and balancing electricity markets. Later model extensions include vehicle-to-grid interactions and prosumage of solar electricity.
The first study using DIETER examines the power storage requirements for renewables uptake ranging from 60% to 100%. Under the baseline scenario of 80% (the lower bound German government target for 2050), grid storage requirements remain moderate and other options on both the supply side and demand side offer flexibility at low cost. Nonetheless, storage plays an important role in the provision of reserves. Storage becomes more pronounced under higher shares of renewables, but strongly depends on the costs and availability of other flexibility options, particularly biomass availability.

=== Dispa-SET ===