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This paper presents an innovative approach to addressing critical global challenges in long-term energy planning for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The paper proposes and tests an international enabling environment, a delivery ecosystem, and a community of practice. These components are integrated into workflows that yield four self-sustaining capacity-development outcomes. Planning long-term energy strategies in LMICs is particularly challenging due to limited national agency and poor international coordination. While outsourcing energy planning to foreign experts may appear to be a viable solution, it can lead to a reduction in government agency (the ability of a government to make its own informed analysis and decisions). Additionally, studies commissioned by external experts may have conflicting terms of reference, and a lack of familiarity with local conditions can result in misrepresentations of on-the-ground realities. It is argued here that enhancing national agency and analytical capacity can improve coordination and lead to more robust planning across line ministries and technical assistance (TA) providers. Moreover, the prevailing consulting model hampers the release and accessibility of underlying analytics, making it difficult to retrieve, reuse, and reconstruct consultant outputs. The absence of interoperability among outputs from various consultants hinders the ability to combine and audit the insights they provide. To overcome these challenges, five strategic principles for energy planning in LMICs have been introduced and developed in collaboration with 21 international and research organizations, including the AfDB, IEA, IRENA, IAEA, UNDP, UNECA, the World Bank, and WRI. These principles prioritize national ownership, coherence and inclusivity, capacity, robustness, transparency and accessibility. In this enabling environment, a unique delivery ecosystem consisting of knowledge products and activities is established. The paper focuses on two key knowledge products as examples of this ecosystem: the open-source energy modeling system (OSeMOSYS) and the power system flexibility tool (IRENA FlexTool). These ecosystem elements are designed to meet user-friendliness, retrievability, reusability, reconstructability, repeatability, interoperability, and audibility (U4RIA) goals. To ensure the sustainability of this ecosystem, OpTIMUS is introduced—a community of practice dedicated to maintaining, supporting, expanding, and nurturing the elements within the ecosystem. Among other ecosystem elements, training and research initiatives are introduced, namely the Energy Modelling Platform for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific as well as the ICTP Joint Summer School on Modelling Tools for Sustainable Development. Once deployed via workflows, the preliminary outcomes of these capacity-development learning pathways show promise. Further investigation is necessary to evaluate their long-term impacts, scalability, replication, and deployment costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the electricity supply sector needs data and energy system models to aid government instances to achieve optimal decision-making. Since 2006, Ecuador has faced gradual changes in the electricity sector and invested more than 11 billion dollars in expanding the generation. We use an open-source model generator in the present study and develop the first long-term generation expansion model for Ecuador. We select specific social and hurdle rates to represent the government's decision to mobilize private energy infrastructure investments. We build scenarios for social and hurdle rates to evaluate the sensitivity of renewable and conventional generation technologies to such rates. Results show that medium and large hydropower have a low sensitivity to discount rates. Medium and large hydropower plays a significant role in the energy mix in the mid and long-term, regardless of the discount rate. Results from this model find no significant contribution of non-hydro renewables. Among these, only geothermal reaches around 160 MW for all scenarios. Installing geothermal and hydropower minimizes generation from conventional technologies until 2034; then, CCGT installations increase CO2 emissions above 2020 levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here, we propose an approach for supporting the design and performance evaluation phase of solar cooking technologies, to assess their eventual appropriateness for remote rural contexts, before proposing them for local field tests. The approach is based on (1) local context description and analysis, (2) design and construction of the solar cookers, and (3) thermodynamic performance evaluation. We used the approach to analyse 3 cookers for the area of Mutoyi, Burundi: a parabolic, a panel, and a box cooker. From phases 1 and 2, only panel and box cookers emerged as the technically viable solutions: They were sized, optimized, built, and tested. In phase 3, the thermodynamic evaluation indicated that the box cooker is inappropriate, since water does not reach high enough temperature. Instead, the panel cooker shows a Standardized Cooking Power of 46.85 W and a stagnation temperature higher than 75°C, which is able to bring the water to the boil when the environmental temperature is higher than 25°C. The thermal efficiency of the cooker resulted equal to 8.13%, while the mean integral temperature T m remained around 60°C for all the lab test replicates, higher than the minimum internal temperature to cook legumes. The results of the procedure applied to the case study indicate that the panel cooker can be proposed for local field tests with local food and cooking practices, for assessing its final appropriateness on the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a European context characterized by growing need for operational flexibility across the electricity sector, the combined cycle power plants are increasingly subjected to cyclic operation. These new operation profiles cause an increase of production costs and decrease of revenues, which undermines the competitiveness of the combined cycles. Power plant operators need tools to predict the effect of off-design operation and control mechanisms on the performance of the power plant. Traditional Thermodynamic or Thermoeconomic models may be unpractical for the operators, due to their complexity and the computational effort they require. This study proposes a Thermoeconomic Input-Output Analysis model for the on- and off-design performance prediction of energy systems, and applies it to La Casella Natural Gas Combined Cycle (NGCC) power plant, in Italy. It represents a stand-alone, reduced order model, where the cost structure of the plant products and the Thermoeconomic performance indicators are derived for on- and off-design conditions as functions of the load and of different control mechanisms, independently from the Thermodynamic model. The results of the application show that the Thermoeconomic Input-Output Analysis model is a suitable tool for power plant operators, able to derive the same information coming from traditional Thermoeconomic Analysis with reduced complexity and computational effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing complexity and the many challenges related to fast-changing and highly de-carbonised electricity systems require reliable and robust open source energy modelling frameworks. Their reliability may be tested on a series of well-posed benchmarks that can be used and shared by the modelling community. This paper describes and integrates stand-alone, independent modules to compute the costs and benefits of flexible generation options in the open source energy investment modelling framework OSeMOSYS. The modules are applied to a case study that may work as a benchmark. The whole documentation of the modules and the test case study are retrievable, reproducible, reusable, interoperable, and auditable. They create a case to help establish a FAIR-compliant, user-friendly, and low-threshold model and data standards in modelling practices. As is well known, one of the options for balancing high shares of variable renewables is flexible power generation by dispatchable units. The associated costs need to be considered for short-term operational analyses and for long-term investment plans. The added modules contribute to extending the modelling capacity by introducing (a) costs of ramping, (b) non-linear decrease of efficiency at partial load operation, and (c) refurbishment of existing units in the cost minimisation objective function of OSeMOSYS. From application to the test case study, two main insights are drawn: costs of ramping and decreased partial load efficiency may influence the competitiveness of generation technologies in the provision of reserve capacity; and refurbishment of existing units may represent attractive investment options for increasing flexibility. Both effects are also seen in the long-term and may impact infrastructure investment decisions to meet decarbonisation targets. These effects would not be captured without the introduction of the modules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated approaches to implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a crucial requirement if the global development agenda is to move at pace to 2030. In this regard, and noting the interlinkages between the different SDGs we propose pilot studies of integrated approaches to climate (SDG13), land (SDG 15), energy (SDG7) and water (SDG6) in various countries, including Sierra Leone. Policies towards the achievement of one SDG may affect positively or negatively the achievement of the others. This work analyses the impact of energy sector development and policies on energy access as well as water and land resources use, in a context of changing climate. It focuses on Sierra Leone, one of the countries with the lowest access to electricity in the world, recently struck by civil conflicts, ebola outbreak and fall in international iron prices, yet endowed with abundant resources to fuel its own development. The long-term energy planning tool OSeMOSYS (Open Source integrated Modelling System) is employed the analysis. Three scenarios are studied:• An outlook for high growth, resulting in high increase in the demand for energy;• A dry-climate under which there is limited adaptation in the power sector and water scarcity in other sectors;• Introduction of a liquid biofuel policy, where gasoline used in transportation is blended with 3% of bioethanol, in energy content.The results show that investments are required to meet national development goals - yet these are at risk due to crucial interactions between the energy-water-land systems. These interactions cause constraints and are potentially vulnerable and sensitive to climate change. In particular, though the GHG emission outlook looks favourable due to large hydro and solar potentials, GHGs emissions in the transport sector could significantly increase in the event of dry climatic conditions. Additionally, land is limited and thus deforestation and land use changes may be needed to meet national development. This has implications for increasing domestic growth of biofuel feedstocks. If done, crop imports would increase. A dry climate can impact the economy significantly affecting power generation and further ramping up the need for crop imports. The model developed has the potential for further extension and application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]