Main Features of TEO Module

  • The TEO module optimizes the matching between the different sources and the sinks, while taking into account various technical and economic constraints, such as demand profiles, technology cost, efficiencies and losses while also considering thermal energy storage.

  • Optimal mix of investments in technologies and optimal capacities in storage and district heating network can be determined. The operation of the technologies and the intra annual heat supply is also optimized in the module.

  • The module can also analyze the competition between centralized and de-centralized. The current input data includes competition between waste heat sources and decentralized solar thermal based heating solutions

  • The TEO module optimizes the matching between the different sources and the sinks, while taking into account various technical and economic constraints, such as demand profiles, technology cost, efficiencies and losses while also considering thermal energy storage.

  • The TEO module carries out a socio-economic type of optimisation, where the total system cost is minimised, irrespective of who bears it. It does not take a policy-maker, or investor, or business perspective.

  • The time domain, time resolution and technological options are flexible and chosen by the user. For example, an analysis can be carried out for a time domain of 5, or 10 or 30 years. Similarly, the time resolution can be of few time steps in a year, up to 8760 hourly time steps. The types of technologies that can be modelled include: heat exchanger, heat pumps, boilers etc. The module is a model generator, where none of the above is pre-defined. The user must define all the technologies and the commodiies and crate links between the two.

  • The module relies on two core types of objects: Technologies and Fuels. These are very flexibly defined, so that many different processes and commodities can be represented in a model. A Technology is nothing but a process - I.e. a box – with inputs, outputs, a transfer function between them, and several associated techno-economic characteristics. A Fuel is any commodity entering or exiting a Technology. Therefore, with a Technology the user may represent a heat exchanger or a heat pump and for the Fuel, the user may represent electricity or the excess heat stream.