Abandoning the Residual Load Duration Curve and Overcoming the Computational Challenge

Abstract

As the importance of variable energy sources in-creased in the power sector, employing the Residual Load Duration Curve (RLDC) method became standard practice in many energy system models. RLDCs allow modelers to integrate temporally high-resolution data sets in the energy system while keeping the underlying model tractable. Although the RLDC approach can assist us in simplifying calculations, this comes at a cost: RLDCs disregard the inter-relations between time slices. In this manuscript, we elaborate on our strategy to overcome the computational burden caused by abandoning the RLDC method in the BioENergy OPTimization model (BENOPT). For that purpose, the available resources are utilized efficiently to reduce the run-time.