Academic Research Powered by PLEXOS

Dr. Paul Deane’s career began in the wind industry, building big wind farms across North America. Curious to understand his work’s impact on the power system, his passion for modeling led to pursuing his Ph.D. to understand the impact of wind generation and the role electricity would play in the future. 

However, this research required a modeling tool that allowed for vigorous pier review and transparency. Having been exposed to multiple computer models in the past, Dr. Deane found most to be black boxes. Equations were hidden, and understanding how data passed through these models was not transparent. Looking for a solution, Dr. Deane turned to PLEXOS over a decade ago and has not looked back.

Read more about Dr. Deane's journey with PLEXOS and Energy Exemplar in this blog post. 

The Problem 

When starting his Ph.D., Dr. Deane was interested in building his own model of an energy system; however, academic software options significantly limited the ability to collaborate with the energy industry in his research and posed a significant upfront investment of time and energy before any research could begin increasing the time to earn a Ph.D. by 50%.

The Solution

PLEXOS covered all the requirements identified by Dr. Deane for academic research, being transparent, auditable, scalable, and a platform that can be customized. In ten years of using PLEXOS, Dr. Deane has utilized Energy Exemplar’s platform to study such diverse topics as the past hundred years of Irish energy policy, hydrogen in low carbon futures, and wind and solar impacts variations to the European power system, to name just a few. 

“PLEXOS as a tool is agnostic; it has no spatial awareness. It is a model builder. PLEXOS can be used to model everything from a house to a community, to a country to the world. It’s whatever you’re able to imagine building within the power system, as long as there’s some reasonable physics behind it.”

The Results

Ten years and over one hundred twenty-five academic publications later, PLEXOS is Dr. Paul Deane’s top modeling software. His research has explored topics ranging from “An integrated gas and electricity model of the EU energy system to examine supply interruptions” to “The role of hydrogen in energy futures” to how governments should consider the implications of energy policy. And most recently  “Assessing global climate change mitigation scenarios from a power system perspective using a novel multi-model framework” with PLEXOS. Building his research on the PLEXOS platform, Dr. Dean has solidified his place as a thought leader in the Future of Energy across Europe. Learn more by following Dr. Deane, his research or watch his TED Talk!

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