THIS POST IS A WIKI. IF YOU ARE REGISTERED ON OPENMOD, YOU CAN EDIT IT.
Following up on my LinkedIn post:
“Where should I start if I want to learn energy system modelling?”
This is a question I get asked often, so I’ve put together a list of free courses, practical tips, and community resources. Feel free to add to this thread – let’s keep improving this together!
— @MaxParzen
Core Courses to Build Your Foundation for Energy Modelling
If you are a lecturer, educator, or similar, we have developed guides explaining how to build modern course platforms in 30min. With this you can also easily integrate content like from Fabian & Marta below.
My personal recommendation list that I can vouch for:
- Data Science for Energy System Modelling – Fabian Neumann, TU Berlin
Course Link - Integrated Energy Grids – Marta Victoria & Aleksander Grochowicz, DTU
Course Link - Electricity Markets & Energy Modelling Lectures – Tom Brown, TU Berlin
Course Link - Intro to the UNIX Shell – Software Carpentry Course Link. Great for scaling to HPC, scripting automations, and CI workflows.
- Power Systems Optimization – Jesse Jenkins & Michael Davidson Course GitHub
- Electricity Sector Engineering, Economics & Regulation – Jesse Jenkins, Princeton Dropbox Lectures
Other recommendations (please add more):
- List of Macro Energy Systems Coursework – Open Resources
- Energy Planning Courses – Climate Compatible Growth #CCG
Course Link - Energy Access Explorer – OpenLearn Create Course
- Energy Trading, Portfolio & Risk Management – Prof. Dr. Felix Müsgens
YouTube Playlist - Scientific Programming (Julia, Optimization) – Abel Soares Siqueira
YouTube Channel
Practical Tips for Beginners
My personal recommendation list:
- I’ve seen many people try to “run” before they’ve learned to walk.
If you’re touching code, one of the most underrated skills is knowing how to debug effectively. Debugging is the key to understanding, testing, and building. - If you’re developing something new, don’t start by forcing it into a huge, complex model.
Instead, build a minimal viable example that proves your approach works. It’ll save you hours and massively improve your understanding. - Try to engage with the community.
Having worked a lot with pypsa, I found the YouTube channels and Discord communities very helpful for collaboration and problem solving.
Other recommendations (please add more):
- Create a large representative test-case early.
It allows you to test the speed and efficiency of your method on a realistic scale right from the start. - Feel free to ask on the openmod forum and mailing list.
URLs on the footer below.