Mid- to long-term capacity planning for a reliable power system in Kenya

Over the coming decades, Kenya is likely to see a large increase in electricity demand driven by economic growth and wider electrification of different sectors. At the same time, Kenya remains committed to maintain its high share of renewable generation. This study proposes a novel framework to soft link OSeMOSYS, a capacity expansion model (CEM), and FlexTool, a production cost model (PCM), to address the limitations of CEMs in the representation of variable renewable energy sources. Results show the effectiveness of the methodology in identifying critical grid issues that would have been missed by the capacity expansion model alone, especially in the case of a higher penetration of non-dispatchable sources. They also confirm that based on robust planning approaches, Kenya is well placed to maintain its very low carbon generation system under different demand growth projections, leveraging on firm generation from geothermal and high wind potential

Addressing Challenges in Long-Term Strategic Energy Planning in LMICs: Learning Pathways in an Energy Planning Ecosystem

This paper presents an innovative approach to addressing critical global challenges in long-term energy planning for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The paper proposes and tests an international enabling environment, a delivery ecosystem, and a community of practice. These components are integrated into workflows that yield four self-sustaining capacity-development outcomes. Planning long-term energy strategies in LMICs is particularly challenging due to limited national agency and poor international coordination. While outsourcing energy planning to foreign experts may appear to be a viable solution, it can lead to a reduction in government agency (the ability of a government to make its own informed analysis and decisions). Additionally, studies commissioned by external experts may have conflicting terms of reference, and a lack of familiarity with local conditions can result in misrepresentations of on-the-ground realities. It is argued here that enhancing national agency and analytical capacity can improve coordination and lead to more robust planning across line ministries and technical assistance (TA) providers. Moreover, the prevailing consulting model hampers the release and accessibility of underlying analytics, making it difficult to retrieve, reuse, and reconstruct consultant outputs. The absence of interoperability among outputs from various consultants hinders the ability to combine and audit the insights they provide. To overcome these challenges, five strategic principles for energy planning in LMICs have been introduced and developed in collaboration with 21 international and research organizations, including the AfDB, IEA, IRENA, IAEA, UNDP, UNECA, the World Bank, and WRI. These principles prioritize national ownership, coherence and inclusivity, capacity, robustness, transparency and accessibility. In this enabling environment, a unique delivery ecosystem consisting of knowledge products and activities is established. The paper focuses on two key knowledge products as examples of this ecosystem: the open-source energy modeling system (OSeMOSYS) and the power system flexibility tool (IRENA FlexTool). These ecosystem elements are designed to meet user-friendliness, retrievability, reusability, reconstructability, repeatability, interoperability, and audibility (U4RIA) goals. To ensure the sustainability of this ecosystem, OpTIMUS is introduced—a community of practice dedicated to maintaining, supporting, expanding, and nurturing the elements within the ecosystem. Among other ecosystem elements, training and research initiatives are introduced, namely the Energy Modelling Platform for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific as well as the ICTP Joint Summer School on Modelling Tools for Sustainable Development. Once deployed via workflows, the preliminary outcomes of these capacity-development learning pathways show promise. Further investigation is necessary to evaluate their long-term impacts, scalability, replication, and deployment costs

Optimal design of gas turbine-solid oxide fuel cell hybrid plant

n the present study, a hybrid solid oxide fuel cell-gas turbine power plant consisting of a compressor, SOFC stack, heat exchangers, combustor and turbines is considered. Individual models are developed for each component through applications of the first law of thermodynamics and the corresponding cost of each component is also presented. Two objective functions including the total thermal efficiency of the system and the capital cost of the plant are defined. Since any effort to decrease the total cost of the plant leads to a less efficient system, the considered objective functions are conflicting. Therefore, multi-objective optimization using genetic algorithm is utilized in order to achieve a set of optimal solutions, each of which is a trade-off between objective functions. The main advantage of this work is providing a wide range of optimal results each of which can be selected by the designer considering available investment and the required efficiency of the system

Toward optimal designs of domestic air-to-water heat pumps for a net-zero carbon energy system in the UK

Summary: Air-to-water heat pumps come with diverse design options whose cost and performance are correlated, giving rise to a crucial question: should manufacturers aim at designing higher-performance yet higher-cost heat pumps, reducing the wider energy infrastructure cost but increasing the upfront cost to end users, or more affordable yet lower-performance alternatives? Comprehensive heat pump performance and cost models are integrated within a whole UK energy system framework to capture how different heat pump designs influence the decarbonization pathway. We find that an uptake of higher-performance heat pumps leads to a reduced national electricity generation capacity. However, there is an optimal design that minimizes the total system transition cost, indicating a point of diminishing returns, beyond which, instead of investing in even higher heat pump performance, it is more cost effective to invest in centralized energy generation and storage. Insights are valuable for locations with low heat pump adoption and high electricity-to-gas price ratios. Science for society: Reducing the carbon footprint associated with domestic heating remains a challenge in many economies. Whole-energy system models are used to identify national decarbonization pathways, but many of them share a limitation: the cost and performance of competing technologies, especially with respect to heating, are represented by single efficiency and cost values or simplified models. In this work, detailed models that capture the cost and performance characteristics of heat pumps for different designs are integrated within a whole-energy system model. This integration extends the capabilities of the system model: besides optimizing network infrastructures, it also provides information on the optimal technology designs required to meet the system-wide objectives. Our findings reveal that there is an optimal heat pump design that minimizes the system transition cost. Further performance improvements increase overall costs, favoring investment in centralized energy generation and storage

Mid- to long-term capacity planning for a reliable power system in Kenya

Over the coming decades, Kenya is likely to see a large increase in electricity demand driven by economic growth and wider electrification of different sectors. At the same time, Kenya remains committed to maintain its high share of renewable generation. This study proposes a novel framework to soft link OSeMOSYS, a capacity expansion model (CEM), and FlexTool, a production cost model (PCM), to address the limitations of CEMs in the representation of variable renewable energy sources. Results show the effectiveness of the methodology in identifying critical grid issues that would have been missed by the capacity expansion model alone, especially in the case of a higher penetration of non-dispatchable sources. They also confirm that based on robust planning approaches, Kenya is well placed to maintain its very low carbon generation system under different demand growth projections, leveraging on firm generation from geothermal and high wind potential

Addressing Challenges in Long-Term Strategic Energy Planning in LMICs: Learning Pathways in an Energy Planning Ecosystem

Peer reviewed: TrueAcknowledgements: We would like to extend special thanks to Simon Patterson of the #CCG team for his valuable editorial additions, which significantly improved the quality of this paper. Additionally, we would like to acknowledge the contribution of Sarel Greyling, also from the #CCG team, for his outstanding graphic design work, which enhanced the visual presentation of the findings. The initiation and initial running of the Roundtable Process was led by Luca Petrarulo under the Energy for Economic Growth Programme, overseen by Simon Trace. The OpTIMUS community was initiated by Mark Howells and Holger Rogner. The Energy Modelling Platform (EMP) and its Summer Schools were initiated by Mark Howells with the active involvement of Carla Cannone, several members of the division of Energy Systems at KTH (now the division of Energy Systems, including Eunice Ramos, Ioannis Pappis, Vignesh Sridharan, and Constantinos Taliotis), and members of the OnSSET team. Mark Howells also led the development of The ICTP Sustainable Development Summer School. The first EMP (EMP-Europe) was developed in partnership with the European Commission, under the Horizon 2020 REEEM project (Grant Agreement n. 691739), with Mark Howells as Project Coordinator for REEEM. EMP-Europe was organized under WP3 of REEEM led by the Reiner Lemoine Institute (RLI), with key contributions from Berit Müller and Ludwig Hülk (RLI), Francesco Gardumi and Georgios Avgerinopoulos (KTH), and Olavur Ellefsen (TOKNI). EMP-Europe has now become the Energy and Climate Modelling Platform (ECEMP). The EMP Africa was developed with Linus Mofor and Mekalia Paulos Aklilu of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and partners. While EMP for Latin America and the Caribbean was developed with the University of Costa Rica and partners. The EMP for Asia-Pacific is planned for a full launch in 2024.Publication status: PublishedFunder: members of the OpTIMUS communityFunder: Climate Compatible Growth Programme (#CCG) of the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)This paper presents an innovative approach to addressing critical global challenges in long-term energy planning for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The paper proposes and tests an international enabling environment, a delivery ecosystem, and a community of practice. These components are integrated into workflows that yield four self-sustaining capacity-development outcomes. Planning long-term energy strategies in LMICs is particularly challenging due to limited national agency and poor international coordination. While outsourcing energy planning to foreign experts may appear to be a viable solution, it can lead to a reduction in government agency (the ability of a government to make its own informed analysis and decisions). Additionally, studies commissioned by external experts may have conflicting terms of reference, and a lack of familiarity with local conditions can result in misrepresentations of on-the-ground realities. It is argued here that enhancing national agency and analytical capacity can improve coordination and lead to more robust planning across line ministries and technical assistance (TA) providers. Moreover, the prevailing consulting model hampers the release and accessibility of underlying analytics, making it difficult to retrieve, reuse, and reconstruct consultant outputs. The absence of interoperability among outputs from various consultants hinders the ability to combine and audit the insights they provide. To overcome these challenges, five strategic principles for energy planning in LMICs have been introduced and developed in collaboration with 21 international and research organizations, including the AfDB, IEA, IRENA, IAEA, UNDP, UNECA, the World Bank, and WRI. These principles prioritize national ownership, coherence and inclusivity, capacity, robustness, transparency and accessibility. In this enabling environment, a unique delivery ecosystem consisting of knowledge products and activities is established. The paper focuses on two key knowledge products as examples of this ecosystem: the open-source energy modeling system (OSeMOSYS) and the power system flexibility tool (IRENA FlexTool). These ecosystem elements are designed to meet user-friendliness, retrievability, reusability, reconstructability, repeatability, interoperability, and audibility (U4RIA) goals. To ensure the sustainability of this ecosystem, OpTIMUS is introduced—a community of practice dedicated to maintaining, supporting, expanding, and nurturing the elements within the ecosystem. Among other ecosystem elements, training and research initiatives are introduced, namely the Energy Modelling Platform for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific as well as the ICTP Joint Summer School on Modelling Tools for Sustainable Development. Once deployed via workflows, the preliminary outcomes of these capacity-development learning pathways show promise. Further investigation is necessary to evaluate their long-term impacts, scalability, replication, and deployment costs.</jats:p

Addressing challenges in long-term strategic energy planning in LMICs: learning pathways in an energy planning ecosystem

This paper presents an innovative approach to addressing critical global challenges in long-term energy planning for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The paper proposes and tests an international enabling environment, a delivery ecosystem, and a community of practice. These components are integrated into workflows that yield four self-sustaining capacity-development outcomes. Planning long-term energy strategies in LMICs is particularly challenging due to limited national agency and poor international coordination. While outsourcing energy planning to foreign experts may appear to be a viable solution, it can lead to a reduction in government agency (the ability of a government to make its own informed analysis and decisions). Additionally, studies commissioned by external experts may have conflicting terms of reference, and a lack of familiarity with local conditions can result in misrepresentations of on-the-ground realities. It is argued here that enhancing national agency and analytical capacity can improve coordination and lead to more robust planning across line ministries and technical assistance (TA) providers. Moreover, the prevailing consulting model hampers the release and accessibility of underlying analytics, making it difficult to retrieve, reuse, and reconstruct consultant outputs. The absence of interoperability among outputs from various consultants hinders the ability to combine and audit the insights they provide. To overcome these challenges, five strategic principles for energy planning in LMICs have been introduced and developed in collaboration with 21 international and research organizations, including the AfDB, IEA, IRENA, IAEA, UNDP, UNECA, the World Bank, and WRI. These principles prioritize national ownership, coherence and inclusivity, capacity, robustness, transparency and accessibility. In this enabling environment, a unique delivery ecosystem consisting of knowledge products and activities is established. The paper focuses on two key knowledge products as examples of this ecosystem: the open-source energy modeling system (OSeMOSYS) and the power system flexibility tool (IRENA FlexTool). These ecosystem elements are designed to meet user-friendliness, retrievability, reusability, reconstructability, repeatability, interoperability, and audibility (U4RIA) goals. To ensure the sustainability of this ecosystem, OpTIMUS is introduced—a community of practice dedicated to maintaining, supporting, expanding, and nurturing the elements within the ecosystem. Among other ecosystem elements, training and research initiatives are introduced, namely the Energy Modelling Platform for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific as well as the ICTP Joint Summer School on Modelling Tools for Sustainable Development. Once deployed via workflows, the preliminary outcomes of these capacity-development learning pathways show promise. Further investigation is necessary to evaluate their long-term impacts, scalability, replication, and deployment costs.</p