---
title: "Open energy system models"
chunk: 4/16
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"
---

EMMA is the European Electricity Market Model. It is a techno-economic model covering the integrated Northwestern European power system. EMMA is being developed by the energy economics consultancy Neon Neue Energieökonomik, Berlin, Germany. The source code and datasets can be downloaded from the project website. A manual is available. EMMA is written in GAMS and uses the CPLEX commercial solver.
EMMA models electricity dispatch and investment, minimizing the total cost with respect to investment, generation, and trades between market areas. In economic terms, EMMA classifies as a partial equilibrium model of the wholesale electricity market with a focus on the supply-side. EMMA identifies short-term or long-term optima (or equilibria) and estimates the corresponding capacity mix, hourly prices, dispatch, and cross-border trading. Technically, EMMA is a pure linear program (no integer variables) with about two million non-zero variables. As of 2016, the model covers Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland and supports conventional generation, renewable generation, and cogeneration.
EMMA has been used to study the economic effects of the increasing penetration of variable renewable energy (VRE), specifically solar power and wind power, in the Northwestern European power system. A 2013 study finds that increasing VRE shares will depress prices and, as a consequence, the competitive large-scale deployment of renewable generation will be more difficult to accomplish than many anticipate. A 2015 study estimates the welfare-optimal market share for wind and solar power. For wind, this is 20%, three-fold more than at present.
An independent 2015 study reviews the EMMA model and comments on the high assumed specific costs for renewable investments.

=== GENESYS ===

GENESYS stands for Genetic Optimisation of a European Energy Supply System. The software is being developed jointly by the Institute of Power Systems and Power Economics (IAEW) and the Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical Drives (ISEA), both of RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany. The project maintains a website where potential users can request access to the codebase and the dataset for the 2050 base scenario only. Detailed descriptions of the software are available. GENESYS is written in C++ and uses Boost libraries, the MySQL relational database, the Qt 4 application framework, and optionally the CPLEX solver.
The GENESYS simulation tool is designed to optimize a future EUMENA (Europe, Middle East, and North Africa) power system and assumes a high share of renewable generation. It is able to find an economically optimal distribution of generator, storage, and transmission capacities within a 21 region EUMENA. It allows for the optimization of this energy system in combination with an evolutionary method. The optimization is based on a covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES), while the operation is simulated as a hierarchical set-up of system elements which balance the load between the various regions at minimum cost using the network simplex algorithm. GENESYS ships with a set of input time series and a set of parameters for the year 2050, which the user can modify.
A future EUMENA energy supply system with a high share of renewable energy sources (RES) will need a strongly interconnected energy transport grid and significant energy storage capacities. GENESYS was used to dimension the storage and transmission between the 21 different regions. Under the assumption of 100% self-supply, about 2500 GW of RES in total and a storage capacity of about 240000 GWh are needed, corresponding to 6% of the annual energy demand, and a HVDC transmission grid of 375000 GW·km. The combined cost estimate for generation, storage, and transmission, excluding distribution, is 6.87 ¢/kWh.
A 2016 study looked at the relationship between storage and transmission capacity under high shares of renewable energy sources (RES) in an EUMENA power system. It found that, up to a certain extent, transmission capacity and storage capacity can substitute for each other. For a transition to a fully renewable energy system by 2050, major structural changes are required. The results indicate the optimal allocation of photovoltaics and wind power, the resulting demand for storage capacities of different technologies (battery, pumped hydro, and hydrogen storage) and the capacity of the transmission grid.

=== NEMO ===