Electricity sector models are widely used by academic, government, and industry researchers for policy analysis and planning. These models are complex and subject to high uncertainty. While parametric uncertainty is often addressed through sensitivity analyses, the potential uncertainty of the models themselves has often remained unclear. This webinar will bring together three recent efforts to characterize structural model uncertainty: Matteo Giacomo Prina and co-authors provided a framework for classifying and comparing energy system models. The corresponding paper can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2020.109917 Candise Henry and co-authors benchmarked four US capacity expansion models using highly simplified scenarios. Find out more in their recent publication: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.117745 Oliver Ruhnau and co-authors compared five European electricity markets models analyzing the role of carbon pricing within the German MODEX-POLINS project. The results are published here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2021.111701 The webinar will feature short presentations from these three projects and a joint discussion of lessons learnt from the perspective of modelers and decision-makers, moderated by Michael Bucksteeg from the MODEX-POLINS project.

Speakers: Matteo Giacomo Prina; Candise Henry; Oliver Ruhnau; Michael Bucksteeg

Matteo Giacomo Prina holds a Ph.D. in Energy and Nuclear Science and Technology, Politecnico di Milano. His Ph.D. thesis was focused on renewable energy high penetration scenarios using bottom-up modeling. He works at Eurac research since 2014. From 2021 he is working within the energy system modeling and e-mobility group (MEM). He has worked on several projects in the energy system modeling and scenario generation topics: Integrids, E2I@NOI, H2020 TRUST-PV, and also a Twinning project in Ukraine. His expertise varies from the development of algorithms for energy system modeling to the analysis and visualization of high amount of data. He also actively participated in the OpenMod initiative meetings.

Candise Henry is a Senior Energy Researcher at RTI International. Her work is focused on understanding the interactions between climate variability and power generation from the power plant scale up to grid scale. Before joining RTI in 2020, Dr. Henry was a postdoctoral research scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, where she led a model intercomparison effort and helped develop an electricity system model to research efforts towards a near-zero emissions electricity sector. She also previously worked at a solar company in sub-Saharan Africa, managing and carrying out environmental impact assessment projects, leading efforts to collect and analyze electricity demand data, and participating in grid planning. She holds a PhD in Earth Science from Duke University.

Oliver Ruhnau is a Research Associate and PhD Candidate in Energy Economics at the Hertie School in Berlin. He has contributed to the German model comparison project MODEX-POLINS. His PhD research focuses on the economics of flexible electricity demand in the context of sector coupling and variable renewable energy sources. He is co-developing the open-source electricity market model EMMA and applies statistical methods for causal inference. Previously, Oliver was a Data Scientist with the energy service company Digital Energy Solutions. He studied engineering and economics at the RWTH Aachen University and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

Michael Bucksteeg is member of the board and CFO of the German Affiliate of the IAEE. He has led the German model comparison project MODEX-POLINS. In 2019 he joined the House of Energy Markets and Finance at the University of Duisburg-Essen as senior researcher. Before, he gained experience in the industry and worked for the German Transmission System Operator Amprion. He has a background in energy economics and expertise in regulation and power market design. In his doctoral thesis he studied the impact of high shares of variable renewable energy sources on selected market design elements. His research interests are in the field of model-based analysis of policy instruments and heterogeneity in energy system modelling.