Improve solid biomass cost

[lindnemi]

I did a bit of cross-checking on the biomass cost based on the JRC Enspresso database. It would be possible to adjust the costs based on the planning_horizon, represented countries, included commodities. Even a regional solution of biomass costs would be feasible.

In general I find that the biomass costs assumed in the costs data are a bit too low. 3% too low in 2045 and 15 % in 2020. Perhaps it would be most interesting for myopic mode, or regional simulation too have more accurate cost data.

For further use, here is the code i used

import pandas as pd

pots = pd.read_excel(
        "data/ENSPRESO_BIOMASS.xlsx",
        sheet_name="ENER - NUTS0 EnergyCom",
        usecols="A:F",
    ).query("Scenario == 'ENS_Med'")

cost = pd.read_excel(
        "data/ENSPRESO_BIOMASS.xlsx",
        sheet_name="COST - NUTS0 EnergyCom",
        usecols="A:F",
    ).query("Scenario == 'ENS_Med'")

countries = ['AL', 'AT', 'BA', 'BE', 'BG', 'CH', 'CZ', 'DE', 'DK', 'EE', 'ES', 'FI', 'FR', 'GB', 'GR', 'HR', 'HU', 'IE', 'IT', 'LT', 'LU', 'LV', 'ME', 'MK', 'NL', 'NO', 'PL', 'PT', 'RO', 'RS', 'SE', 'SI', 'SK', 'XK']

commodities = ["MINBIOWOOW1", "MINBIOWOOW1a", "MINBIOFRSR1","MINBIOFRSR1a", "MINBIOAGRW1"]

year = 2040

cos = cost[
    cost["Energy Commodity"].isin(commodities) 
    & cost["NUTS0"].isin(countries) 
    & (cost["Year"] == year)]

pot = pots[
    pots["Energy Commodity"].isin(commodities) 
    & pots["NUTS0"].isin(countries) 
    & (pots["Year"] == year)]

(pot["Value"].values * cos["NUTS0 Energy Commodity Cost "].values).sum() / pot["Value"].values.sum() * 3.6 * 1.135 # last term is inflation

[fneum]

From Markus' biomass paper.

[lindnemi]

Ah, good to know that Markus did all this great work already. I have a few more questions, maybe we can have brief exchange here @millingermarkus. My main problem is that we see quite a lot of biomass boilers in 2045 in the ariadne model, and i just wanted to double check all our biomass assumptions, mainly with regard to pelletizing cost:

1. Isn't there an energy loss when converting e.g. sawdust to pellets? Is that already accounted for in the ENSPRESO data?
2. From the resource on the pelletizing cost, i find that the 9€ cover only the processing in the pelletizing plant. Shouldn't we also include some cost for the transport to / from the pellets plant?
3. Adding 9€ on top of the domestic biomass residues cost from the Figure, puts us in the range of 17-30€/MWh. The pellets price in germany was around 50€/MWh in 2020 and is now at ~60€. Should we do something about this discrepancy?

Some more (ariadne-specific) thoughts and sources are here: https://github.com/PyPSA/pypsa-ariadne/issues/141

[millingermarkus]

Interesting that you obtain biomass boilers, doesn't usually happen in my case, which is also why I haven't had reason to dive deeper into more exact costs of pelletizing etc. so I don't have answers unfortunately.

My questions are rather: which other biomass usage options do you include, and how much biomass is available at what cost? And which residential/commercial heat options do you include? Under the conditions in the paper @fneum pasted above, biomass boilers are not competitive, and solid biomass is focused on applications with carbon capture to make most use of the carbon.