BALMOREL

BALMOREL is an open-source partial equilibrium model, analysing the electricity and combined heat and power sector on various geographic levels. The analysis of further sectors via sector coupling (e.g. e-mobility, individual heating) is also possible via model add-ons. The model was originally developed by DTU and is now used and further developed by a wide range of institutions within Europe and worldwide, including AIT who have made use of this model within various research activities at Austrian and European level. BALMOREL is a deterministic bottom-up energy system model that is able to co-optimize energy dispatch and investments via linear (and for some applications mixed-integer) programming. For this, equations on electricity and district heat balance, capacity and energy constraints, production of dispatchable and non-dispatchable units, operational constraints, storage operation, transmission constraints, emission caps, and several more are considered. As a result, the model delivers energy conversion characteristics, fuel consumption, electricity exports and imports, emissions, investments in plants and transmission lines, prices on traded energy, and total system costs. TU Wien and AIT have jointly developed a model database and set-up that is ready for analysing the whole EU electricity market, with all member states included as nodes and with all details and specifics necessary for a sound impact assessment.

This geographically extended version of BALMOREL has been successfully applied within recently completed and ongoing research projects (e.g.H2020 AURES II or ACRP SECURES, Schöniger et al. 2023).