Dispa-SET 2.0: unit commitment and power dispatch model

Most analyses of the future European energy system conclude that in order to achieve energy and climate change policy goals it will be necessary to ramp up the use of renewable energy sources. The stochastic nature of those energies, together with other sources of short- and long-term uncertainty, already have significant impacts in current energy systems operation and planning, and it is expected that future energy systems will be forced to become increasingly flexible in order to cope with these challenges. Therefore, policy makers need to consider issues such as the effects of intermittent energy sources on the reliability and adequacy of the energy system, the impacts of rules governing the curtailment or storage of energy, or how much backup dispatchable capacity may be required to guarantee that energy demand is safely met.
Many of these questions are typically addressed by detailed models of the electric power sector with a high level of technological and temporal resolution. This report describes one of such models developed by the JRC's Institute for Energy and Transport: Dispa-SET 2.0, a unit commitment and dispatch model of the European power system aimed at representing with a high level of detail the short-term operation of large-scale power systems. The new model is an updated version of Dispa-SET 1.0, in use at the JRC since 2009.