MUSE: A new global energy model – Overview and Application to the Residential Building Sector of the UK
As part of Energy Futures Lab‘s daytime seminar series Dr Julia Sachs, Department of Chemical Engineering discusses MUSE a new global energy model.
Abstract
The MUSE model (the ModUlar energy systems Simulation Environment), the new modelling environment developed at Imperial College London, simulates plausible pathways of the energy systems transition to a low-carbon economy on a global scale. The model simulates the behaviour of real investors, including under different decarbonisation scenarios.
This seminar will first discuss the distinctive features of MUSE in the context of energy systems models, highlighting its scope, modularity, flexibility, and technological detail. A particular focus of the presentation will be on the methodology used in the building sector module which will discuss diffusion of technologies in the UK. Energy-related investment decisions in the residential sector are complex and heterogeneous in the sense that they are not based on one specific criteria, but rather a range of drivers of consumer behaviour.
Given these challenges, the modelling approach includes agent-based methods to determine energy related investment decision-making, explicitly characterizing the ability of people to gather information, evaluate the options, and choose among alternatives. A case study is presented which illustrates the attributes of the approach for the residential building sector in the UK, which has strong decarbonisation targets
Biography
Julia Sachs studied Engineering Cybernetics at the University in Stuttgart in Germany and graduated with a Diploma in 2012. Julia then went on to do a PhD in model-based optimization of hybrid energy systems in rural areas also at the University of Stuttgart in collaboration with the Research Centre of Bosch in Singapore until 2016. Julia is working on the building and refinery sector of MUSE energy systems model at the Sustainable Gas Institute at the Imperial College London. Her current work focuses on the integration of people’s behaviour in the residential and commercial building sector to capture and the heterogeneity in people’s investment decisions.
Venue
The talk will be held in Room 611 of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (building 16 On the campus map). The room is known as the Gabor Suite.
If you are entering the building from Dalby Court/through the building’s main entrance take the lift to the sixth floor, turn right through the double doors and it is near the end on your left hand side.