Open ENTRANCE has developed an open-source modelling platform that:
- Allows carrying out scientific calculations and assessments for different future options of a low-carbon Europe.
- Makes models relevant for analysing different aspects of the energy transition open available, e.g. energy system models, macro-economic models, etc.
- Makes data to be used in energy transition analyses open available, like energy system data, human behavioural data (e.g. energy consumption habits), macro-economic data, etc.
- Soft links models such that output from one model can be used as input to another model and in that way provid consistent analyses across models.
- Supports stakeholders to determine consequences of the energy transition and identify the best ways to transition to a ‘low-carbon’ economy.
- Is openly available to use by any interested users, targeting mainly researchers and modellers.
9 case studies have been performed during the project, as a real-size proof of concept of the project, applied to the main topics of the energy transition. These case studies made extensive use of the Open ENTRANCE platform.
The objective of this report is mainly to help future users of the platform to make the best use of it, as well as to give them some advice coming from the experience of the case studies.
Conducting case studies via the Open ENTRANCE platform allows to:
- Elaborate deeper analysis of the Open ENTRANCE scenarios thanks to the possibility of running specialised models fed with the Open ENTRANCE scenario results, including power system models, local models….
- Benchmark results of different models (eg. 2 different power system models, 2 different macro economic models, 2 different energy system models) and easily compare them. This also increases confidence in the results;
- Increase confidence of all results thanks to the full transparency of data, assumptions, algorithms and results;
- Showcase analyses by taking advantadge of the postoprocessing and visualisation functions available in the Open ENTRANCE platform;
- Make all results easily re-useable.
The first part of this report includes a tutorial designed to help users to conduct a case study within the Open ENTRANCE environment, in particular how to define a case study workflow, how to describe the data involved in this workflow using the Open ENTRANCE nomenclature, how to download data from the platform, how to create linkage scripts for soft-connection of models to the platform and how to create datasets and upload them to the platform. The second part is devoted to advice from experience within the 9 case studies.