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PyPSA-AT: A Sector-Coupled Open Optimisation Model of the Austrian Energy System

PyPSA-AT is an Austrian adaptation of the open European energy system model PyPSA-Eur. It provides a detailed sector-coupled model of the Austrian energy system, including electricity, gas, transport, heating and agriculture sectors.

The project builds upon the methodologies developed in PyPSA-DE - the German adaptation of PyPSA-Eur - while incorporating Austrian-specific network topology, energy system characteristics, and regulatory frameworks.

For comprehensive documentation on the underlying PyPSA-Eur framework, model decisions, and implementation details, please refer to the PyPSA-Eur documentation and PyPSA-DE documentation.

Features

PyPSA-AT extends the PyPSA-Eur model with Austria-specific enhancements. \ While some features have already been implemented (✅), some are being actively worked on (🔨) or discussed (💡) and many more are planned in the future (📌). An overview of planned and active features can be found in the following table. \ For more detailed implementation information, see the mods module documentation.

TOPIC FEATURE DESCRIPTION PR STATUS
Modeling High spatial and temporal resolution in AT Maintain NUTS2 and NUTS3 spatial resolution using administrative clustering in AT and at 1H and 3H temporal resolution in the myopic workflow. #53 ✅
Methane Pyrolysis (Plasma) — turquoise hydrogen Add methane pyrolysis (plasma variant) as a configurable H₂ production pathway. CH₄ is split into H₂ and solid carbon black; no CO₂ is emitted. Cost data from DEA sheet 104 (2024). #73 🔨
Improve Hydropower technologies Differentiate open- and closed-loop PHS, reservoirs with and without inflows, and improve inflow time series for Austrian hydropower plants. - 📌
Model coupling Improve biomass sector accuracy by coupling PyPSA-AT with a dedicated carbon cycle model. - 📌
Endogenous industry demands Replace the exogenous energy modal split per industry sub-sector with optimized production paths. - 📌
Austrian climate goals Introduce regional CO2 budgets to comply with Austria's climate goals (CO2 neutral by 2040) - ✅
Depict Austrian policies Include EAG targets for net renewable electricity production by 2030 and other regulatory requirements in the baseline scenario. - 🔨
Calibration Enhanced energy demand profiles for all sectors and Austrian NUTS3 regions Update demand curves for industry, transport, domestic, commercial and agriculture sectors with NUTS3 resolution in AT. - 📌
Calibrate renewable energy production capacity potentials in AT Limit RES deployment in accordance with Studie Erneuerbaren Energiepotenziale - 📌
Restrict technology occurrences Review technology occurrences such as V2G, SynGas, Pyrolysis, etc. and restrict their first appearance years. - 📌
Calibrate Heat sector Review and calibrate heat sector including existing capacities per heat system, demand profiles, and endogenous building thermal retrofitting. - 📌
Validation Compare model results with Eurostat Energy Balance Compare PyPSA-AT baseline scenario results with historical energy demands reported in the Eurostat Energy Balance to validate model results. - 🔨
Input Data Improved brownfield data for gas and hydrogen infrastructure provided by AGGM Include accurate data on the Austrian methane and hydrogen grids, storage infrastructure, trade volumes and retrofit potentials and costs. - 🔨
Austrian biomass potentials Include Austrian wet and solid biomass potentials as reported by UBA and BeST, respectively. - 📌
Electricity grid brownfield update Update 380 kV network topology and improve resolution of electricity transmission grid for Austrian regions. - 📌

Installation

Please note that PyPSA-AT is only supported on Linux platforms. Installations on Windows or macOS require modifications currently not supported.

  1. Clone the repository: 

    git clone https://github.com/AGGM-AG/pypsa-at.git
cd pypsa-at

  2. Installation using pixi (optional):

Explicit package installation may be skipped since running commands with pixi run installs and activates all dependencies in pixi.toml.

pixi install

Usage

  1. Configure your model by adjusting the base scenario in config/config.at.yaml
  2. Include scenario settings that differ from the base scenario in config/scenarios.manual.yaml
  3. Run the model's Snakemake workflow: 
    pixi run workflow
    or activate your virtual environment and run snakemake using a shorthand: 
    pixi shell
snakemake all_at -call

Contributing

Limited contribution capacity

The development team focuses on establishing a well-calibrated representation of the Austrian energy system and has limited capacity to review contributions from the community at the moment.

In general, please install the pre-commit hooks if you plan to contribute to this project.

pixi run pre-commit install

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.txt file for details.

Parts of the code that originate from PyPSA-DE or PyPSA-Eur remain under their original MIT licenses. The copyright and attribution notices from these original projects are preserved in the respective source files.

Acknowledgments

PyPSA-AT builds upon PyPSA-Eur and PyPSA-DE, developed by the PyPSA team at TU Berlin and other contributors.

Citation

If you use PyPSA-AT in your research, please cite it as:

Worschischek, Philip; Zechner, Nicole; Avetisjan, Vartan; Wernhart, Helmut (2026):
PyPSA-AT - Sektorgekoppeltes Energiesystemmodell des österreichischen Energiesystems.
Version 0.1.0. Austrian Gas Grid Management AG.
https://github.com/AGGM-AG/pypsa-at

Documentation Structure

The documentation follows the best practice for project documentation as described in the Diátaxis documentation framework and consists of four separate parts:

  1. How-To Guides
  2. Tutorials
  3. Reference
  4. Explanation

Quickly find what you're looking for depending on your use case by looking at the different pages.

This documentation is built using MkDocs, mkdocstrings, and the Material for MkDocs theme.