This posting backs up an earlier message sent to the openmod mailing list. That message seeks both support for the idea and a couple of volunteers to help work up the submission, act as a contact, and provide testimonials. If you wish to contribute to the current discussion, please do so here (private to forum users) and not on Google Groups (which is fully public).
The Open Energy Modelling Initiative (openmod) will have been active for ten years in September 2024, so my suggestion is to self‑nominate for an RGI good practice award and, at the same time, take opportunity to look back over that span of time and attempt to distill some of the key events and influences. Perhaps those who were present at the outset could recount their impressions in due course.
As indicated, the RGI application form requires two contact persons, so I will need to twist someone’s arm in due course if no one comes forward to volunteer for this role.
About RGI
RGI is the Renewables Grid Initiative and is based in Berlin, Germany:
The news service Clean Energy Wire (CLEW) describes RGI this way (links added):
The Renewable Grid Initiative is a non-profit organisation which promotes the integration of 100% renewable energy into the European grid. TSOs and NGOs join forces in RGI to support the build-up of a sufficient grid infrastructure in Europe for both decentralised and large-scale renewable energy sources. The initiative promotes grid development that is efficient, sustainable, timely, environmentally friendly, and socially acceptable to all stakeholders.
RGI is co-funded by the European Climate Foundation and Stiftung Mercator. It regularly issues reports on questions of grid functionality and hosts conferences on this particular topic.
The RGI Grid Awards
Each year, RGI runs the RGI Grid Awards for Good Practices:
I have been in contact with RGI and they would accept a self‑application from the openmod. We would fall within the Technological Innovation and System Integration category.
Applications for this year close on Sunday 21 July 2024.
Development and submission of an application
In keeping with previous practices, this application to RGI would be under the names of the individuals who sign on and not under the name of the openmod itself. The openmod has no legal standing in any case.
As noted earlier, discussion regarding the merits and contents of such an application should take place on the appropriate openmod mailing list thread and not here.
Also bear in mind that this suggestion might not attract enough support from the openmod community to warrant an application.
The mechanics of the submission process are well documented and RGI can assist on request.
Context
Most of the projects that receive RGI Grid Awards are more concrete than our application would be. And the openmod cannot claim any authority over the various open modeling projects that have been applied to grid policies in European, be it carrying electricity, fossil gas, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, or other commodities. So what can the openmod claim in this context?
In the early years, members of the openmod community worked cooperatively with ENTSO‑E to try to gain Creative Commons licensing on the Transparency Platform. Those efforts unfortunately failed. But community members were successful in convincing the German BNetzA regulator to apply CC‑BY‑4.0 licensing on their then new SMARD public portal.
Similar efforts continued with submissions to the European Commission on data policy and legislation. Including submissions on the (misleadingly named) Open Data Directive and an open letter to the IEA seeking Creative Commons attribution licensing on their published datasets. The latter effort was reported in the UK press as:
- Ambrose, Jillian (10 December 2021). “Energy watchdog urged to give free access to government data”. The Guardian. London, United Kingdom. ISSN 0261-3077.
One can probably say that a number of energy systems analysis projects have benefited from the presence of the openmod community. As is usual, the counterfactual is difficult to both establish and evaluate. Perhaps the projects themselves could offer their opinions on the role that the wider community played in their efforts and successes.
For instance, various projects have used community processes to advance topics that would benefit from buy‑in across the wider community, followed perhaps by consensus and adoption. These efforts often cover high‑level agendas, such as improved:
- semantic alignment — within and between both data collection and software design
- metadata through use of standards — from loosely agreed to formalized
- information cataloging and related logistics — using the above
- open licensing policies and practices — primarily for data and standards
- processes and metrics to describe and improve data quality and integrity
- technical interoperability for data
- scenario development and harmonization — where appropriate
- model comparison protocols and processes
- interaction with practitioners from other fields of systems modeling
Again, like the modeling efforts indicated, much of this work is undertaken outside the scope of the openmod as an entity. Again perhaps endorsements some of from these more data‑oriented projects could contribute to this application.
The openmod community and forums also provide a relatively gentle on‑ramp for this entering the field. Often from the global south.
Community building, workshops, forums, and related practices
This section talks about activities specifically within the openmod.
The open runs several channels for communication to assist community building:
The openmod forum has 1400 screened members and attracts at least 500 page views per day (excluding indexing bots). The geographic diversity is quite good with representation through good chunks of the global south.
This community has held 18 workshops, most of which were academic in character. Most were held in Europe, two within the United States, and some solely online during the COVID pandemic.
| No | Date | Host | City | Country | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 18–19 September 2014 | DIW Berlin | Berlin | Germany | establishment meeting with 28 participants |
| 2 | 13–14 April 2015 | MCC Berlin | Berlin | Germany | |
| 3 | 10–11 September 2015 | Imperial College London (ICL) | London | United Kingdom | in association with Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment |
| 4 | 28–29 April 2016 | KTH Royal Institute of Technology | Stockholm | Sweden | |
| 5 | 27–28 October 2016 | Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano | Milan | Italy | archived 12 July 2016 at the Wayback Machine |
| 6 | 20–21 April 2017 | Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) | Frankfurt | Germany | |
| 7 | 12–13 October 2017 | Technical University of Munich (TUM) | Munich | Germany | |
| 8 | 6–8 June 2018 | Climate Policy Group, ETH Zurich | Zürich | Switzerland | 63 attendees |
| 9 | 22–24 May 2019 | Department of Engineering, Aarhus University | Aarhus | Denmark | |
| 10 | 18–19 September 2019 | National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) | Golden, Colorado | United States | |
| 11 | 15–17 January 2020 | Hertie School | Berlin | Germany | circa 190 attendees |
| 12 | March thru May 2020 | 2020 mini‑workshop series | online | — | during COVID-19 pandemic, 3 events for 2020 |
| 13 | 4 December 2020 | Climate forecasting for energy workshop | online | — | joint organization with S2S4E project |
| 14 | 5 May 2021 | 2021 mini‑workshop | online | — | during COVID-19 pandemic |
| 15 | 17 February 2022 | 2022 mini‑workshop | online | — | during COVID-19 pandemic |
| 16 | 22–24 March 2023 | International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) | Laxenburg, Vienna | Austria | limited to 65 attendees |
| 17 | 13–14 November 2023 | Stanford University Campus | San Francisco Bay Area | United States | limited to 80 attendees |
| 18 | 26–28 March 2024 | CRESYM and OTE | Grenoble | France | limited to 100 attendees |
The openmod has a YouTube channel located here. Four videos have attracted over one thousand views and there are about 40 clips in total (and a number more in the pipeline from two previous workshops).
The openmod ethos — as captured in our 2014 manifesto that underpinned the formation of the openmod — has arguably aged quite well? Here is a diagram that sums up the views present at the formation of the organization:
Figure: Open modeling chain
Also:
Source: openmod (circa 2017). openmod manifesto. Open Energy Modelling Initiative.
Evaluation criteria
Our application needs to align with the evaluation criteria set by the completion organizers. While also noting that this posting is primarily a call for community interest and only secondarily a work‑in-progress application.
Nonetheless, our submission will need to traverse the following aspects (as outlined here here):
- innovation — with an emphasis on persistence and building upon existing efforts
- outcomes and impacts — for use, probably best traversed by third‑party affirmation
- scope and transferability — innate, really
- collaborative approach — clearly present
- critical evaluation — the community is not reflective in this sense, but we seem to have grown and renewed quite successfully, particularly in terms of workshops and geographic coverage
Closure
This application can only proceed with community support. So please let your views be known and perhaps also contribute to the development of the text. Or alternatively, say if you think the idea is inappropriate and would be best abandoned.
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