Emporium
A comprehensive power system optimization framework that minimizes total system costs while handling both short-term operational decisions and long-term resource allocation. Integrates directly with RIO to seamlessly combine capacity expansion and production cost modeling into one economy-wide framework.
Key Capabilities
Two-Pass Optimization
Combines an initial linear pass over an extended horizon — capturing long-term storage trajectories, hydro allocation, and commitment decisions — with daily mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) for detailed unit commitment and dispatch.
Multi-Sector Coupling
Links electricity with other energy sectors through blends — hydrogen, natural gas, steam, and other energy products. Tracks their production, storage, and usage across the system, enabling true sector coupling in operational decisions.
Advanced Technology Support
Models long-duration storage with multi-day energy management, conversion assets (electrolyzers, electric boilers, heat pumps, thermal energy storage), renewable curtailment, and thermal units with dual-fuel capabilities.
Detailed Thermal Modeling
Full unit commitment for thermal resources: minimum up/down times, ramp rate constraints, startup/shutdown costs, commitment decisions, and operating state transitions.
RIO Integration
Designed to work directly with the RIO capacity expansion model, seamlessly combining long-term investment planning with detailed production cost simulation in one economy-wide framework.
Reliability & Reserves
Enforces operating reserve requirements, unserved energy constraints (using value of lost load), ancillary service provision from storage and generation, and transmission hurdle rates.
Two-Pass Architecture
Initial Linear Pass
Solves a linear programming problem over an extended time horizon, capturing long-term patterns for storage state of charge trajectories, hydro resource allocation, unit commitment decisions, and conversion asset operations. Results inform constraints for the subsequent MILP pass.
Daily MILP Optimization
Mixed-integer linear programming optimizes detailed unit commitment and dispatch decisions for shorter time periods (typically daily), using results from the linear pass to maintain consistency with longer-term resource allocation while keeping computation tractable.
What Emporium Captures
Emporium finds the lowest-cost way to operate the entire energy system hour by hour — balancing generation economics, environmental constraints, and reliability requirements in every dispatch decision.
Real-World Operating Economics
Emporium captures the full cost picture of running an energy system — from the fuel and maintenance costs of keeping generators online, to the economic penalties of starting up and shutting down thermal plants, to the trade-offs of curtailing cheap renewable energy versus storing it for later.
Environmental & Policy Incentives
Models how emissions costs, production tax credits, and environmental constraints shape real dispatch decisions — not just annual targets, but hour-by-hour operational choices that determine what actually runs and when.
System Reliability Costs
Quantifies the true cost of keeping the lights on — including the value of reserve margins, the economic impact of transmission constraints between regions, and what happens when demand exceeds available supply.
Questions Emporium Answers
How do new renewables change day-to-day grid operations?
Detailed simulation of how adding wind, solar, and storage reshapes hourly dispatch patterns, ramp requirements, and curtailment across interconnected regions.
What is long-duration storage actually worth?
Valuing storage assets based on their real operational contribution — not just peak-shaving, but seasonal shifting, reserve provision, and multi-sector energy arbitrage.
Can the grid handle massive new loads like data centers?
Simulating how concentrated demand growth interacts with generation adequacy, transmission limits, and reserve requirements across the system.
How do hydrogen and electricity markets interact in practice?
Modeling the hour-by-hour economics of electrolyzers, fuel cells, and conversion assets that link electricity with hydrogen, steam, and other energy products.
Interested in licensing Emporium?
We provide training, documentation, and technical support for clients using our modeling platforms.
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