Can We Rely on Open-Source Energy System Optimization Models? The TEMOA-Italy Case Study

Energy system models have become crucial to assess the effectiveness of possible energy policies in pursuing the declared environmental objectives. Among bottom-up models, the tools most widely used by researchers and institutions to perform scenario analyses and policy evaluations rely on commercial software and closed databases, limiting the transparency of the studies. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate that open-source tools, relying on open databases, can be used as a valid alternative to commercial tools, getting equivalent results not only for simple case studies as done so far, but also for complex (national, regional, or multi-regional) reference energy systems. Working on the already available open TEMOA optimization framework, a bottom-up technology-rich model is developed here for the Italian reference energy system on an extended TEMOA version, comparable in detail and complexity to the equivalent TIMES framework. The accuracy of the novel TEMOA-Italy model in a business-as-usual scenario is assessed, showing that the average relative differences with respect to the consolidated TIMES-Italy results are in the order of few percent. The open-source model, available on Github, is now ready for the test and implementation of new optimization paradigms, which was not possible in the TIMES framework.