Demand growth

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Hi!


I observed that both the Ireland model and JRC-EU-TIMES simulate demand growth by specifying the demand in certain discrete years (without reference to drivers – see Ireland's "Scen_B_SYS_Demands" and EU-TIMES' "Scen_Demand_REF2016"). However, the "Documentation_for_the_TIMES_Model-Part-I" mentions that in the TIMES model, "demand drivers (such as population, GDP, households, etc.) are obtained externally, through other models or from other accepted sources." This can also be found in the Demos.

So, which approach is more commonly used?

Best,
Xiao

[JGlynn]

Hi!


I observed that both the Ireland model and JRC-EU-TIMES simulate demand growth by specifying the demand in certain discrete years (without reference to drivers – see Ireland's "Scen_B_SYS_Demands" and EU-TIMES' "Scen_Demand_REF2016"). However, the "Documentation_for_the_TIMES_Model-Part-I" mentions that in the TIMES model, "demand drivers (such as population, GDP, households, etc.) are obtained externally, through other models or from other accepted sources." This can also be found in the Demos.

So, which approach is more commonly used?

Best,
Xiao

Hi Xiao,

both approaches are used depending on what data is available and typically what level of granularity and attention you are paying to your demand estimation.

Global model's like TIAM are restricted with what global driver data sets are consistent and available across all regions to "drive" the energy service demand change towards the model horizon.
GDP, Population, building footprint... the internal approach converting from drivers to ESD demands is esentialy a single factor linear regression where you provide a coefficient from the driver to the ESD based on a historical regression relationship.

National model's can use local multi-factoral and more complex data sets in methods for estimating energy service demands in which case you might have a method or model to project exogenous energy service demands using a few factors. if you exogenously calculate your ESD projections you can use machine learning or multi factorial non-linear regression methods...

Both Dr Balyk's TIM paper and Dr Gauer's low energy demand (LED) paper should help explain what the idea was in TIM (Ireland).

Balyk, Olexandr, James Glynn, Vahid Aryanpur, Ankita Gaur, Jason McGuire, Andrew Smith, Xiufeng Yue, and Hannah Daly. 2022. ‘TIM: Modelling Pathways to Meet Ireland’s Long-Term Energy System Challenges with the TIMES-Ireland Model (v1.0)’. Geoscientific Model Development 15 (12): 4991–5019. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-4991-2022.

Gaur, Ankita, Olexandr Balyk, James Glynn, John Curtis, and Hannah Daly. 2022. ‘Low Energy Demand Scenario for Feasible Deep Decarbonisation: Whole Energy Systems Modelling for Ireland’. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition 2 (August):100024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rset.2022.100024.

hope that helps, and hope the above is accurate.

James