Regione Piemonte
Markal
Both Market
Allocation (Markal) and The Integrated MARKAL-EFOM System (TIMES, a
more advanced version of Markal) are model generators that allow to
build bottom-up partial equilibrium models.
Starting from the characterization (in terms of consumption, costs
and emissions) of the technologies and of the commodities flows of a
specific energy system (in this case, a regional system), these
models are able to analyze mid-long term energy consumption trends
and they allow to identify the optimal allocation of investments and
annual expenses, according to user-defined criteria.
On the basis of the exogenous evolution of services demands (related
to the evolution of the above mentioned macro-economic drivers), the
model defines the optimal mix of technologies and commodities that
minimizes the total system cost (i.e. the objective function) under
a set of user-defined constraints (environmental targets, regulatory
limits, improvement of existing technologies, penetration rate of
new technologies, availability of new resources, etc.).
The level of detail of the description of the considered system is
chosen by the analyst (f.i. very detailed analysis of power plants,
aggregated analysis of end-use technologies, etc.).
The model operates on the basis of a structure called
Reference
Energy System (RES).