Electricity - POLES

Model Documentation - POLES
Model scope and methods - POLES Model concept, solver and details - POLES Temporal dimension - POLES Spatial dimension - POLES Policy - POLES Socio-economic drivers - POLES Population - POLES Economic activity - POLES Macro-economy - POLES Production system and representation of economic sectors - POLES Energy - POLES Energy resource endowments - POLES Fossil energy resources - POLES Uranium and other fissile resources - POLES Bioenergy - POLES Non-biomass renewables - POLES Energy conversion - POLES Electricity - POLES Heat - POLES Gaseous fuels - POLES Liquid fuels - POLES Solid fuels - POLES Grid, pipelines and other infrastructure - POLES Energy end-use - POLES Transport - POLES Residential and commercial sectors - POLES Industrial sector - POLES Other end-use - POLES Energy demand - POLES Technological change in energy - POLES Land-use - POLES Emissions - POLES Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) options - POLES Climate - POLES Non-climate sustainability dimension - POLES Appendices - POLES Data - POLES References - POLES
Corresponding documentation
AIM-Hub BLUES C3IAM COFFEE-TEA DNE21+ GCAM GEM-E3 GRACE IFs IMACLIM IMAGE MESSAGE-GLOBIOM POLES PROMETHEUS REMIND-MAgPIE TIAM-UCL WITCH
Previous versions
Archive of POLES version ADVANCE
Model information
Model link	http://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/poles https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/poles-jrc-model-documentation-0
Institution	JRC - Joint Research Centre - European Commission (EC-JRC), Belgium, http://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/.
Solution concept	Partial equilibrium (price elastic demand)
Solution method	SimulationRecursive simulation
Anticipation	Myopic

The electricity system consists of 3 main parts:

Demand load curve

The model considers 2 typical days (winter and summer), each split into 12 time arrays of 2 hours each. The demand load curve is derived from the sum of sectoral electricity demand load curves (end uses), net trade and losses.

In the POLES-ADVANCE version these two days are the base of 27 days each, which are the combinations of low, medium and high situations for demand, wind production and solar production. This way, extreme situations are taken into account in the operation and planning of the power system.

Operation (production and storage)

The model considers first the non-dispatchable energy sources (hydro, wind, solar). The residual load is met by dispatchable generators based on their variable costs (efficiency and fuel cost, including additional taxes or financial support schemes). A proxy for the power price is computed based on the marginal producer's cost. Storage technologies and demand response (which shift a part of the load to another time slice of a given day) are used if the within-day spread of two-hourly prices compensates their efficiency losses. The number of full load hours of each production and storage technology is the weighted aggregation of these 54 days. Some over production can appear when the non-dispatchable productions (also taking into account a minimum power output for must-run technologies) exceed demand. When possible it is stored; otherwise it is curtailed and the load factors of wind and solar are decreased accordingly.

Capacity planning

The planning of new capacities needs to address expected future electricity needs (based on a rolling ten-year extrapolation) while considering the upcoming decommissioning of existing plants (with vintage) and the special contribution of wind and solar (non-dispatchable).

The 648 time-slices per year (54*12) are organised in seven blocks with expected capacity factors of 8760 hours, 8030 hours, 6570 hours, 5110 hours, 3650 hours, 2190 hours and 730 hours. The associated number of full load hours define different total production costs for each of these blocks. This defines the theoretical technology market shares together with coefficients that are calibrated to replicate historical technology mix. Non-dispatchable wind and solare are first determined, in competition with all technologies. However, they don't produce constantly on all seven blocks. Once their capacity is decided (limited by a maximum potential), the remaining need per investment block is updated with the actual production of wind and solar (which is deduced from the current participation of wind of solar in each block).

The dispatchable technologies are then planned based on the remaining capacity needs for each investment block, the theoretical market shares and the resource constraints for some technologies.

<figtable id="POLES_tab_1">

Electricity production technologies in POLES

Fuel	Technologies
Nuclear	Conventional nuclear design
	New nuclear design ("Generation IV")
Coal	Pulverized fluidized coal
	Pulverized fluidized coal with CCS
	Integrated coal gasification with combined cycles
	Integrated coal gasification with combined cycles with CCS
	Conventional coal thermal turbine
	Conventional lignite thermal turbine
Gas	Conventional gas thermal turbine
	Gas turbine
	Gas combined cycles
	Gas combined cycles with CCS
	CHP (decentralized)
	Gas fuel cell (decentralized)
Oil	Conventional oil thermal turbine
	Oil combined cycles
Biomass	Conventional biomass thermal turbine
	Biomass gasification
	Biomass gasification with CCS
Hydro	Run-of-river
	Reservoir (lake)
	Small hydro (<10 MW)
Wind	Onshore
	Offshore
Solar	Utility PV
	Distributed PV (decentralized)
	Solar thermal power
	Solar thermal power with storage
Ocean	Tidal & wave ocean
Geothermal	Geothermal power
Other	Hydrogen fuel cell (decentralized)
Storage	Pumped hydro
	Compressed air
	Batteries (lithium ion)
Demand-side solutions	Vehicle-to-grid
	Load shifting

</figtable>

In addition to the technologies mentioned in the figure above, one POLES version includes further detail of biomass technologies in the EU, based on work with the GREEN-X model.

Electricity prices

Total production cost is the sum of fixed cost (investment, discount rate, fixed O&M) and variable cost (fuel cost, efficiency, variable O&M), including further taxes or financial support schemes. Investment costs evolve with learning functions (exogenous, endogenous 1 factor, endogenous 2 factors). Efficiency is exogenous. Fuel costs are derived from endogenous fuel prices and assumptions on taxation policies.

Finally the POLES model calculates electricity prices from system production cost for base load (used to set the price for industry) and peak load (used to set the price for residential-services-transport).

Information sources include: Enerdata, Eurostat, IEAWEO 2015, ENTSO-E, ETDB, WECWEC 2013a, EC-JRCEC-JRC 2014.

The model has been used to study the power system costs of mitigation policies under various configurationsduscha2013cogriffin2013wh. The sysytem integration of variable renewables in the model has been tested in several studiesdesprés2016stpietzcker2016sy.