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by littlestymaar 1700 days ago
> it's a difference between blindly modeling storage for all generated power so that it never goes to waste

No, that's Zerrahn's take on Sinn's paper, but you should not take it for granted. And the cheap shot about the «Non-robustness» of Sinn's paper should serve as a warning that Zerrahn is not really giving Sinn's paper a fair treatment.

> But...that's what Zerrahn did? It's mentioned in the paper that they replicated Sinn's findings with their own data as a validation that they're calculating with comparable data.

Yes, and now I want to re-use the same dataset, but with a proper time-based methodology so I can find a specific time period for which Zerrahn's-level of storage would lead to a network collapse (Like I did for the French data above).

1 comments

> No, that's Zerrahn's take on Sinn's paper, but you should not take it for granted.

So you're saying that Zerrahn lies about Sinn's paper? Are you saying that Sinn actually models wasting a part of energy to minimize costs? (Because if he doesn't, then he commits the immediately obvious mistake that I described.)

> Yes, and now I want to re-use the same dataset, but with a proper time-based methodology so I can find a specific time period for which Zerrahn's-level of storage would lead to a network collapse (Like I did for the French data above).

Why don't you just go for a MILP model? Because this clearly is a case for one. This is not really different from modeling production systems in the industry (with warehouses replaced by batteries and such). Make the total cost your minimization criteria and tell us what storage capacity you ended up with.

I've been intent for some time on applying this to the Czech grid, where it's actually somewhat simplified by the diminished need for transmission, but I have yet to gather all the necessary data.

> So you're saying that Zerrahn lies about Sinn's paper?

Zerrahn presents Sinn's paper in a pretty opinionated (and unfair IMHO) way, but I wouldn't call that lying either.

> Are you saying that Sinn actually models wasting a part of energy to minimize costs? (Because if he doesn't, then he commits the immediately obvious mistake that I described.)

No, but Sinn model the system the way he does not “to avoid wasting energy”, claiming otherwise is just an attempt to ridicule him. He's modelling the system the way he does because it considers a different set of trade-offs.

> Why don't you just go for a MILP model

I'm not familiar with those, do you have a good introduction?

> I've been intent for some time on applying this to the Czech grid, where it's actually somewhat simplified by the diminished need for transmission, but I have yet to gather all the necessary data.

AFAIK the guys making Electritymap[1] have open-sourced all their data sources[2], maybe it can help.

[1]: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/CZ?solar=false&remote=tr... [2]: https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/blob/maste...

> He's modelling the system the way he does because it considers a different set of trade-offs.

OK, what are the trade-offs that could possibly warrant going for a set of restrictions that massively impact TCO? For example, in a somewhat related area, one thing that seems plausible is unavailability of a resource: induction motors and generators are less efficient than permanent magnet motors and generators but they avoid supply vulnerability for certain chemical elements, so including them for comparison in a sensitivity analysis is reasonable. But for this situation I don't really see an analogical justification -- or at least I don't see one that would be immediately obvious.

> I'm not familiar with those, do you have a good introduction?

That's just mathematical economics 101. You didn't have a linear programming course?

> AFAIK the guys making Electritymap[1] have open-sourced all their data sources[2], maybe it can help.

I don't necessarily mean national grid data -- I have that already. Mostly what I'm missing is transmission data on a sub-national level, and performance and cost estimates of several pumped storage plants that would be binary variables in the model (since each of the proposed sites has different parameters, they're not even integer variables the same way that for example nuclear reactor blocks would be - they have to be a set of binary (built/not-built) options in the solution).