Introductory seminar
As I mentioned in my previous post, the past weeks have been dedicated to the study of the SWITCH model, in addition to a deep review of the state of the art of the power system modeling in Integrated Assessment Models. This allowed me to identify both the possible solutions to improve the WITCH model offered by the IAM literature and the potential routes to implement an integration between WITCH and SWITCH. Hence, I was able to define more in detail the objectives and the activities envisioned for this year at UC Berkeley. These topics have been the core of the introductory seminar that I gave yesterday, where I presented the MERCURY project to my new RAEL colleagues, in accordance to my proposal.
In brief, substantially confirming the scheme that had been hypothesized in the kick-off meeting, my idea is to work keeping two distinct paths in parallel: on the one hand, I will improve WITCH – partly referring to SWITCH, but mostly to the IAM literature – while on the other hand I will explore more direct interactions between WITCH and SWITCH.
Concerning the former point, a clear list of tasks has been defined. Concerning the latter point, which allows more flexibility, my ambition – that I reported in the presentation – would be to soft-link the two models for a detailed modeling of the European power sector, which I would try to adopt for some applications already in the first year. During the discussion, the possibility of developing SWITCH specifically for Italy was also suggested: I will explore this opportunity as well. In any case, interactions and joint applications of the two models are possible even in the absence of a modeling framework explicitly integrating the two, should this be infeasible due to time constraints. In this perspective, the detailed actions will be calibrated along the way depending on the work evolution.
You can find the presentation here.