Modelling energy systems for the future

As countries move toward low-carbon, affordable and reliable energy solutions, planning becomes more important than ever. In Danida Fellowship Centre’s learning programme “Energy systems modelling using Balmorel”, the participants learn how to design smarter and more sustainable energy systems. 

By Elena Adamo

In April and May 2025, professionals from eight different countries participated in the learning programme “Energy Systems Modelling using Balmorel”. The participants were senior energy planners working for partner organisations of the Strategic Sector Cooperation (SSC) in Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa, Türkiye and Vietnam. The learning programme was planned and implemented by Energy Modelling Lab (EML) in collaboration with Danida Fellowship Centre.

What is the Balmorel Model?

“Balmorel is a very detailed energy system model. And when I say model, I mean a set of complex equations that captures how a system operates, in this case, the electricity system,” explains Ida Græsted Jensen, Partner at Energy Modelling Lab and the course manager for the learning programme.

The rationale of the programme is that knowing the theoretical aspects of the model is not enough, practical experience is equally important. This is the reason why participants do not just study how energy and electricity systems work in theory, they also learn how to use and adjust the Balmorel model’s variables and parameters, to build future scenarios tailored to their own national context.

The Balmorel Model was originally developed by the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and has since then been adopted and modified by several institutions. Today, it helps planners test energy scenarios, plan investments and support policy decisions using real, local data.

During the course of the learning programme, participants focused especially on electricity systems: for example, looking at areas such as power generation and grid planning. Although it is not the only mathematical model for energy planning available, the Balmorel Model has the advantage of being a cost-effective and flexible open source software, making it easy to adapt to different national and regional needs.

Equations to solve global energy challenges

For practitioners, effective energy and electricity planning is key to addressing global energy challenges and investing in a more sustainable future.

“We’ve been using Balmorel in several countries to analyse how they can meet emission targets, diversify their energy grids, or integrate more solar and wind power,” says Anant Atul Visaria, consultant at Ea Energy Analyse, who has co-facilitated the learning programme in collaboration with EML for the past five years. “In this context, I believe Balmorel has a great potential to address many global challenges within the energy sector.”

One of the most valuable aspects of the learning programme is that participants learn how to apply the Balmorel Model in practice. Gaining the skills to use the model independently, to change the parameters and be able to use it first-hand, means that it may no longer be necessary to rely on external consultants, and this makes planning more transparent and efficient for the practitioners themselves:

“Balmorel is no longer a black box for me,” says Eunice Cortes, a participant from Mexico and Director of Strategic Projects in Low Carbon Technologies at the National Institute of Climate Change.

As she explains, Mexico’s National Institute of Climate Change already had a setup for using the Balmorel Model, but Eunice joined the learning programme to gain the skills to be able to better understand it and change the parameters herself, thus gaining a deeper control over the tool. “Now that I feel confident in my skills, I think that it will be much easier to use Balmorel to help us determine the timeline for Mexico’s net-zero goal!”

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