Energy simulation (CEL)

The default North Sea and Baltic Sea editions of MSP Challenge have an energy simulation running in the background.

The core energy simulation software is generic (meaning it doesn't depend on a specific region) and was developed by Breda University of Applied Sciences' Kevin Hutchinson, based on collaborations with several colleagues (notably Carlos Santos and Wilco Boode) and external advisors (notably Lodewijk Abspoel and Thomas Aksan). As a separate application, it takes input data from the MSP Challenge server on the different energy grids implemented within the edition at hand, calculates how much of the maximum capacity generated can actually reach the applicable country or countries given the energy infrastructure, and feeds back that output data to the server again. This is again done each simulated month, making this another discrete-event simulation. The application that handles this energy input, throughput and output is called CEL.

This system relies on energy grids implemented in the edition at hand through the MSP Challenge client software. This means that if there are no energy grids at the start of an MSP Challenge session (so no offshore wind farms, for example), then CEL will have nothing to calculate. This is why the default North Sea and Baltic Sea editions of MSP Challenge have so-called starting plans in place that implement a large set of energy grids (country-specific offshore wind farms complete with cables connecting them to landing stations) before the session starts.

• Read more about CEL's design and implementation in this paper written for and presented at the ESM 2018 conference in Ghent, Belgium.