Strategic energy planning for large-scale energy systems: A modelling framework to aid decision-making

• Presentation of a new large-scale energy system modelling approach for public decision-making support.
• Assessment of advantages and drawbacks of a sequential model structure.
• Focus on monthly resolution to highlight seasonality issues of the energy system.
• Detailed description of sub-models to allow reproducibility.

Concerns related to climate change and security of energy supply are pushing various countries to make strategic energy planning decisions. This requires the development of energy models to aid decision-making. Large scale energy models are often very complex and use economic optimization to define energy strategies. Thus, they might be black-boxes to public decision-makers. This work aims at overcoming this issue by proposing a new modelling framework, designed to support decision-makers by improving their understanding of the energy system. The goal is to show the effect of the policy and investment decisions on final energy consumption, total cost and environmental impact.The modelling approach and the model structure are described in detail. Final energy consumption is represented as the sum of three main components: heating, electricity and transportation. In this framework, a sequential modelling strategy allows the assessment of the competition between electricity and fuels in the heating and transportation sectors without increasing the model complexity. A monthly resolution is chosen in order to highlight seasonality issues of the energy system. Developed with the goal of being easily adaptable to any large-scale energy system, the modelling approach is currently implemented within an online energy calculator for the case of Switzerland.