Web-based Decision Support Software for Hybrid Energy Systems Based on the IDAES Framework

Significant commercial scale deployment of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies are necessary to achieve the climate change mitigation goal of greatly reducing the global CO2 emissions, while allowing for the utilization of fossil fuels as a transitional power source to continue. There is a diverse portfolio of enabling technologies for global climate change mitigation available for large-scale CO2 emissions reductions and CCS will play a critical role in meeting the international goal of limiting the global warming to 2°C. To achieve this goal, significant investments in new technologies will be required over the next 20 years. Hybrid energy systems combine energy sources, energy storage and carbon capture to provide the potential of greater flexibility and lower costs for various decarbonization scenarios. REI will deliver a novel, cloud-based hybrid energy decision-making software tool for modeling hybrid power systems with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The software will take advantage of significant investments by DoE in hybrid systems modeling and economic analysis, while allowing non-expert users to evaluate various decarbonization scenarios. The IDAES-based software will be wrapped with a web-based user interface and will be sold using a software-as-a- service (SaaS) model, where users pay for access to the website and corresponding simulation engine. The competitive advantage of our product will be its ease-of-access, ease-of-use, as well as enhanced modeling capabilities that will be phased in by the team. The result will be a cloud- deployed modeling capability that will provide a vital link in the chain to make hybrid energy with CCS achievable at large-scale. The proposed software’s powerful simulation capabilities will be made available to decision-makers that do not have dedicated modeling, simulation and financial experts on staff. The final product will be a computationally efficient, user-friendly hybrid energy decision-making software solution deployed on cloud resources with a web interface using a Software-as-a-Service model. This decision support tool will help enable the widespread use of models and simulations for expansion planning to inform future investments for decarbonization. The software will evaluate the technical and financial feasibility of hybrid power systems that enables users to assess a range of technologies through multi-variate optimizations. The availability of this software will help to develop stakeholder confidence in hybrid energy systems with CCS by evaluating technical details, logistics, and costs. The software is expected to be of interest to the numerous stakeholders involved in hybrid energy and CCS projects, including power utilities, investors, landowners, DoE and regulatory entities and capital investors.