Lars Dittmar: Integration of energy saving technologies and learning curves into the Baltic model of regional electricity liberalisation - Balmorel, Diploma thesis, University of Flensburg 2004.

Introduction

Modelling the energy system is only about four decades old, but in recent years the number of energy models has considerably grown as computers became faster and are more widely used. In the early phase of the modelling history energy scarcity concerns and optimal resources use aspects were the driving force for model developments. However, when the debate about climate change came up in the 1980ies, the analyses and models were extended by the incorporation of environmental issues and a generation of energy-environment-economic models (E3) arose. Nowadays in many application fields energy models are used as decision supporting tools, so for example in environmental policy consulting contexts, as tool for the fundamental analysis of electricity markets or not in the least of electricity companies to support unit commitment and economic dispatch decisions. Many of the energy models are rather black boxes to the potential user, because some of the users do not fully understand the model, but more often the source code, which defines the actual model, is not accessible and/ or it is programmed in an abstract opaque programming language. The Baltic Model of Regional Electricity Liberalisation (Balmorel), however, may be seen as an exact opposite of those black box models. That is, Balmorel relies on an open source philosophy, which implies that the source code is accessible for everybody. Additionally the model is fully documented, consists of basic set of data and is programmed in a highly transparent programming language. These features of Balmorel have permitted to prepare the diploma thesis in hand, which is concerned with Balmorel itself and the integration of energy saving technologies and learning curves into Balmorel.