Modeling for insight using Tools for Energy Model Optimization and Analysis (Temoa)

Abstract

This paper introduces Tools for Energy Model Optimization and Analysis (Temoa), an open source framework for conducting energy system analysis. The core component of Temoa is an energy economy optimization (EEO) model, which minimizes the system-wide cost of energy supply by optimizing the deployment and utilization of energy technologies over a user-specified time horizon. The design of Temoa is intended to fill a unique niche within the energy modeling landscape by addressing two critical shortcomings associated with existing models: an inability to perform third party verification of published model results and the difficulty of conducting uncertainty analysis with large, complex models. Temoa leverages a modern revision control system to publicly archive model source code and data, which ensures repeatability of all published modeling work. From its initial conceptualization, Temoa was also designed for operation within a high performance computing environment to enable rigorous uncertainty analysis. We present the algebraic formulation of Temoa and conduct a verification exercise by implementing a simple test system in both Temoa and MARKAL, a widely used commercial model of the same type. In addition, a stochastic optimization of the test system is presented as a proof-of-concept application of uncertainty analysis using the Temoa framework.