World Bank Electricity Power Model (EPM)

What is the World Bank EPM?

Power system planning by optimizing for costs is a key activity performed by ministries and utilities. The analysis is usually costly due to high licensing costs and/or might not be transparent when performed by external parties. To reduce costs and increase transparency, the Power Systems Planning Group, which is embedded in Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), attempted the development of a planning tool; the World Bank Electricity Planning Model (EPM).

EPM is a least-cost planning framework. Hence, it minimizes the costs of expanding and running a power system while meeting the requirements defined by the model. This refers to, for instance, what generators are added in what year and what fuel they consume. Moreover, EPM addresses the dispatch of the generators and decides on the activities per geographical zone and the exchange between them. Also, the model suggests the allocation of spinning reserves among generators and allows for implementing of different policies, e.g., emissions limits, fuel, and import limits, spinning reserve requirements, transmissions caps, ramp limits, or carbon prices. EPM is formulated in the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS). While GAMS runs EPM, all input data is provided to the model via an Excel interface. Likewise, the results are collected in an Excel output file. Hence, users only interact with GAMS upon installation and, afterward, exclusively use the Excel interface.

How to install the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS)?

  1. Open a web browser
  2. Go to https://www.gams.com/download/ and choose the GAMS system you want to download (Windows 64-bit or Windows 32-bit)
  3. Click “Save File” to download the “.exe” file
  4. Double-click the downloaded file (normally located in the “Downloads” folder).
  5. Click “Run”
  6. Once the “Setup Wizard” window opens, click “Next”
  7. In “Select Destination Location” check that the selected folder has the folder path starting with C:\GAMS\win64.. and click “Next”
  8. Click “Install” to start the installation
  9. While the installation is in progress, copy (Ctrl+C) the text from the license file you were provided.
  10. Once the installation is completed and the “Completing the GAMS Setup Wizard” is prompted, check the option “Launch GAMS Studio”. And below, check the option “Copy license text from clipboard” (the text copied from above should appear.
  11. Click “Finish” and then “OK”

Once the GAMS Studio interface opens, the license file can be seen by selecting “Help” and clicking the item “GAMS Licensing”.

Testing the GAMS installation

  1. Open GAMS Studio
  2. Go to the tab “GAMS” and click on “Model Library Explorer”
  3. Search for the model “Simple Warehouse” by typing, either, “004” or “WHOUSE” and click “Load”
  4. Once the model is loaded, run the model by clicking the green triangle bottom  on the task bar.
  5. If you obtained a message of “Normal completion” (like the one below) in the “Log Process” window, you have successfully installed GAMS in your computer.
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