What is SHOP?

What is SHOP?#

The Short-term Hybrid Optimization Program (SHOP) has been developed by SINTEF Energy Research since the middle of the 1990’s. It has been developed to provide decision support for Nordic and European hydropower producers that participate in open electricity markets. SHOP is based on a battle-tested formal optimization formulation that is a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP), and uses a third-party MILP solver as a backend.

The general objective of the program is to maximize the profit of a single hydropower producer by optimal use of the available resources. SHOP usually has a optimization horizon of 7 to 14 days, and will weigh the short-term income in the electricity markets against the future expected income of saving the water in the reservoirs, described through water values. At the same time, all technical, environmental, and economical constraints have to be respected.

Main applications#

SHOP aims to be a useful decision support tool for all electricity markets that are relevant to a hydropower producer in Europe. SHOP can be run before an electricity market is cleared to help create a bid matrix, and again after the market is cleared to optimally distribute the market obligation.

  • Bid creation: Decision support for creating bids to the electricity markets before they are cleared

  • Rebalancing: Optimal distribution of the market obligation among the units after the market is cleared

  • Intra-day trading: Advanced marginal cost calculations that can be used to bid into intra-day energy markets

  • Schedule validation: Validate production schedules and market strategies through high-fidelity simulation

  • Inflow analysis: Estimate historical inflows to all reservoirs based on simulating historical production schedules and reservoir levels

Key features#

  • Physical modelling: SHOP is able to model a wide range of complex hydropower topologies, ranging from large pressurized tunnel networks connecting large reservoirs and small creek intakes to systems governed by open channel flow and long time delays.

  • Constraint modelling: SHOP includes a vast number of possible constraints that can be added to the optimization, including physical, environmental, and economical constraints.

  • Multiple markets: Optimize positions in the day-ahead spot market and reserve capacity markets in the same run.

  • Hybrid energy support: Integrate batteries, wind, solar, thermal units, and grid modelling into the planning workflow

  • Open interfaces and deployment: Integrate SHOP into your existing systems through our open and well-documented API in C++ and Python.

SHOP flyer#

Download our SHOP flyer as a PDF!