e4clim 1.0: The Energy for a Climate Integrated Model: Description and Application to Italy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Manuscript is interesting and within the scope of the journal. The approach the authors used I find really interesting. However, there are some issues to be corrected before accepting the paper which I note down below.  

The literature review is preliminary and fails to highlight the research gap by far. I suggest include following references but authors can also look into other papers in order to critically highlight the novelty.

Karni Siraganyan, A.T.D. Perera, Dasaraden Mauree, Jean-Louis Scartezzini, "Eco-Sim: A Parametric Tool to Evaluate the Environmental and Economic Feasibility of Decentralized Energy Systems" Energies, 2019 T.D. Perera, Vahid Nik, P.U. Wickramasinghe, Jean-Louis Scartezzini, “Redefining energy system flexibility for designing distributed energy system”, Applied Energy, 2019               T.D. Perera, V. M. Nik, D. Mauree, and J.-L. Scartezzini, “Electrical hubs: An effective way to integrate non-dispatchable renewable energy sources with minimum impact to the grid,” Applied Energy, 2017        T.D. Perera, P.U Wickramasinghe, Vahid Nik, Jean-Louis Scartezzini, “Machine learning methods to assist energy system optimization” Applied Energy,

Explain what are the inputs and outputs to the e4clim software

Explain " The algorithms used to compute these variables are composed of statistical models made of sequences of blocks, and of data sources required by the models. " in detail these are very important components of the model

Can you provide what is the configuration of the energy system that you consider and how does the operation strategy is considered?

"This problem is equivalent to minimizing both the mean and the variance of the mismatch between the demand and the VRE production" why do you select these objective functions? How do you justify it

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 

I attach the Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

my review is attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

I have now reviewed the authors' response and updated manuscript.
Although I concede the manuscript have improved in several way, some of my initial concerns remain.

They mainly relate to the software objectives, the bias correction and validation of the wind model.I also find the presentedobjectives of es4clim do not line up exactly with the actual tool description.

The authors keep mentioning the es4clim is intended to be used under climate change context despite the fact the developed methodology (especially the bias correction) prevent the users for doing that. I would keep the 'climate change' application for the conclusion and improvement for future research. es4clim is intended to 'Assess the impact of climate variability on energy mixes on a broad range of time scales''. The exact meaning of 'broad range of time scales' should be stated here. For instance, I would that es4clim is not suitable for time scale lower than a day since it does not represent correctly the intermittent nature of solar generation (i.e., use of daily average for the clearness index). Please, be specific on the temporal scales in which es4clim can be useful for decision-making. The objectives also mention 'Evaluate the benefits of spatial and technological diversification'.  I agree. However, I think it should be mention somewhere in the document that es4clim does not account for the electricity grid, which is critical for spatial diversification. The lack of validation is still an issue. The authors claim that CORDEX and historical observations do not overlap. It looks like the authors only found observation starting in 2013. I am rather surprised. At least, I would suggest to dig more into a reference I provided in my last review (Staffell and Pfenniger) in which links to historical dataset are available for Italy, starting in 2010 at hourly temporal scale. I would not be surprised that data exist even before that. I might be picky on this point, but basically it sounds to me that es4clim is developed with the purpose to be used by stakeholders to help decision-making for their future energy policy. I would be concerned of that if the models in es4clim have not been validated. I understand the authors' answer about the wind generation bias correction. However, I am still not convinced that is it the best way to tackle the bias issue. Note that historical wind speed should be easier to find that wind power generation as well. Also, the authors claim in their answer that they : 'will use validation in future studies presenting novel results'. I do not understand what does prevent them to do the validation in this study.

As a minor comment, the authors mentioned to have avoided using the term 'risk' in their manuscript following one of my former comment. I found the term risk several times in the manuscript, included in Figures. Note that I actually do not really mind if the authors keep using this term.

Concerning the maps and my suggestion to replace them by Tables, the authors answer has been to show the numeric values directly on the maps. This would not have been my choice but it can work. However, the font size should be larger and the text should not overlap with the bullets as it is currently difficult to read most of these values.

To conclude; I consider the bias correction and validation issues critical for this submission. However, I would let the editor decide whether he/she wants to account for my suggestion, which at this stage remains major revision as I would like at least the two above points addressed before publication. Note also that for some reasons I did not have access to the other reviewers report and associated authors' answers, which is unusual for this Energies journal.

I wish the best to the authors.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

I am satisfied by the revised version of the authors manuscript and now suggest acceptation of the manuscript.

I wish the best to the authors.

B.