Together with Iain Staffell, I published two papers, available today, using reanalysis and satellite data to simulate PV and wind power plants across Europe (references at the bottom of this post). Alongside these two publications, we built a large database of measured power output data to validate the simulations and perform bias corrections. This now allows us to accurately model hypothetical European wind and PV power output over several decades, investigating issues like the impact of increasing PV deployment on net power demand:

Energy system models are used by analysts in academia, government and industry. They allow researchers to build internally coherent simulations and scenarios of the extraction, conversion, transportation and use of energy, either today or in the future, at scales ranging from cities to entire countries or continents. These models are particularly important because they can help with understanding and planning the transition from a fossil-fuel dominated energy system to one primarily consisting of clean and renewable energy.

Update 26 October 2015: The ipython-extensions repository has been updated with instructions for Jupyter/IPython 4.0, but for now, the CodeMirror customizations do not seem to work.

Update 4 March 2015: As of IPython 3.0, it seems that code in custom.js (such as the examples below) should be attached to the app_initialized.NotebookApp event (the ipython-extensions repository is updated accordingly):

$([IPython.events]).on("app_initialized.NotebookApp", function () {
    // your code here
});

Since I use the IPython notebook for a lot of explorative data analysis, I wanted some extra functionality to make day-to-day notebook work just a little bit more pleasant. I use several of Min RK’s excellent notebook extensions, particularly the floating table of contents and the Gist button.

We just published a paper in Nature Climate Change where we examine whether concentrating solar power (CSP) can provide the reliability we’re used to from conventional (fossil or nuclear) power plants. In other words, under what conditions can CSP plants provide baseload power, i.e. an essentially stable output of power over time similar to nuclear plants, and dispatchable power, i.e. power output that can be quickly called upon if needed to balance demand?

Update 25 August 2014: As described in this newer post, this is now part of the ipython-extensions repository.

Sometimes it’s more pleasant to read light text on a dark background, particularly when dealing with code. However, depending on ambient lighting, it can be necessary to switch back to dark text on a light background on short notice.

To make this possible, I created a simple extension for the IPython notebook (version 2.0 and above). It adds a button to the toolbar that toggles between a light (default) and dark display mode for code cells in the notebook, with an optional keyboard shortcut.