RAMSES is a simulation model of electricity and district heating production in any number of electricity and district-heating areas which are used by the Danish Energy Authority [1]. Six major releases have been developed but it is not sold to external users, although it has previously been used as part of a research project [2]. To use the model takes one week of training. RAMSES can simulate a 30-year time-horizon using a user-defined time-step: the time-step options are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24 hours. RAMSES is primarily used to analyse the Nordic electricity market, and it considers the operation of the plants, as well as reinvestment in new plants if required from year to year. The results are primary energy consumption, renewable energy penetration, CO2-emissions etc. It considers all costs and thermal generation technologies within a national energy-system as well as wind, hydro, PV, geothermal, heat pumps, pumped-hydroelectric energy-storage, compressed-air energy-storage and battery energy-storage. However, RAMSES cannot simulate heating requirements that are not on a district heating network other than individual’s electric-heating, and no transport technologies are simulated in RAMSES. To carry out the simulation, it uses a dataset containing a plant database, information on electrical energy consumption, district heating consumption, fuel prices, fuel properties, exchange capacity, taxes, quota prices, grants and much more. RAMSES has been used for most governmental national energy forecasts in Denmark since the 90s, including ‘‘Energy 21” in 1996 [3] and ‘‘A visionary Danish energy policy 2025” in 2007 [4], as well as numerous other policy publications and baseline calculations of the Danish energy-system.
References
- Ramses, Danish Energy Agency, 1st July 2009, http://www.ens.dk/da-DK/Info/TalOgKort/Fremskrivninger/modeller/ramses/Sider/Forside.aspx
- Karlsson, K. Models in Energy Planning and Sustainable Development, 2003. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Civil Engineering, DTU BYG, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.
- Ministry of Environment and Energy (Denmark). Energy 21 – the Danish Government’s action plan for energy 1996. Ministry of Environment and Energy (Denmark); 1996. http://193.88.185.141/Graphics/publikationer/energipolitik_uk/e21uk/index.htm.
- A visionary Danish energy policy 2025, Danish Energy Agency, 2007, http://193.88.185.141/Graphics/Publikationer/Energipolitik_UK/a_visionary_Danish_energy_policy/index.htm.
