Spine-H2-IRL Logo

Hydrogen-based technologies have significant potential for the broad decarbonisation of the future Irish energy system, but questions remain regarding security of supply, reliability and flexibility. There is potential to make more renewable generation more economical leading to even greater deployments of onshore and offshore wind and PV. This will result in new grid challenges and result in greater variability and uncertainty leading to an increased need for flexibility. Potential solutions include long term storage, flexible hydrogen-based generation technologies and batteries. However, the interactions between technologies and their complex interdependencies mean that the problem is not easily modelled.

In this project, Energy Reform build on previous work using an open approach to focus on unanswered questions. Models have been refined and expanded, and new models have been developed, including a new reliability assessment model.

The aim of Spine H2-IRL is to develop and publish open models for the comprehensive assessment of a future Irish energy system with widescale deployment of hydrogen production and consumption, along with other net zero solutions. This is complimented by analysis using the models to demonstrate their utility and provide useful insights into the future development of the Irish energy system. The detailed models facilitate investment optimisation across different sectors while considering network constraints, long and short-term storage optimisation and a high level of operational detail, with additional models providing more comprehensive flexibility and reliability assessments.

Seven future energy system scenarios are implemented and evaluated using the models, providing insights and highlighting barriers and opportunities for large-scale hydrogen. Our scenarios focus on a net-zero electricity system with high degrees of electrification, representing a significant step towards a net-zero energy system. Although non-electrical demands in the building and transport sectors are not explicitly modelled in this work, under the high electricity demand assumptions, a sizable portion of the demand is captured along with the associated decarbonisation.

Spine-H2-IRL Models
Spine-H2-IRL Modelling Workflow

Downloads

Final Report

Spine-H2-IRL Final Report
Download the final report

Summary Report

Spine-H2-IRL Summart Report
Download the summary report

Models and Data

Models and Data

The core models and tools developed in this project have been made available to the modelling community for non-commercial use under the Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike International license v. 4.0.

Prerequisites:

Documentation: SpineOpt documentation including tutorials.

Support: Support is available from the user community at https://github.com/spine-tools/SpineOpt.jl in the following ways:

  • Monthly user meetings for Spine Toolbox and SpineOpt. There you can connect with other users, present problems and exchange experiences. New and old users equally welcome. The meetings are held first Tuesday of every month at 3pm CEST 📆 ics zip and can be joined here. For meeting updates, please checkout this discussion.
  • Gitter(i.e. Matrix) chat service. You need to register but allows to ask quick questions and hopefully get quick answers.
  • Discussion forum(support section) can be used when you don’t know how to get something done or you don’t quite know why something isn’t working. It’s highly appreciated if other users can contribute by helping each other (developers are short on time).
  • Issue tracker should be used only when there is a missing feature or something should work but it’s not working. Update your tools and test with latest software before submitting an issue. In case of new feature, make sure there is no existing issue. Issues reporting bugs should provide sufficient information to enable locating and fixing the bug.
Hydrogen Network Modelling Result