InfraFair: Infrastructure cost allocation

M.A.E. Elabbas, L. Olmos, I.J. Pérez-Arriaga

SoftwareX Vol. 29, pp. 102069-1 - 102069-9

Summary:

Networks play a pivotal role in the energy transition, integrating renewable energy sources and facilitating sustainable energy systems. A huge amount of investment in energy networks is still required to make the energy transition a reality. When constructing network infrastructures, especially among countries at the regional level, the allocation of costs must be well-aligned with the economic benefits each cost-bearing party expects to obtain from the corresponding investments. However, efficiently allocating the cost of infrastructure networks has proven to be a difficult task, especially for cross-border infrastructure. Such a task is expected to become even more difficult in the future as networks become more meshed and coupled between the different sectors. InfraFair is a cost allocation tool for networks, both national and regional. It allocates the costs of different assets in the network to users based on their expected or actual usage. InfraFair is the first open-source software to provide this functionality for all flow-based infrastructure networks, such as electricity, hydrogen, gas and heat. It has been used in studies to allocate transmission network costs in Africa at the regional power pool level and has been developed as part of the OpenMod4Africa project. It is now available open-source for use by the wider scientific community.

Spanish layman's summary:

Este artículo presenta InfraFair, el primer software de código abierto para la asignación de costes de redes. La herramienta puede utilizarse para la asignación de costes de redes de infraestructuras nacionales y regionales y para diseñar tarifas de red a los usuarios en función de su uso previsto o real.

English layman's summary:

The paper presents InfraFair, the first open-source software for network cost allocation. The tool can be used for cost allocation of national and regional infrastructure networks and for designing network tariffs to users based on their expected or actual usage.

Keywords: Cost allocation; Energy infrastructure; Average participations method; African Power Pools

JCR Impact Factor and WoS quartile: 2,400 - Q2 (2023)

DOI reference: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2025.102069

Published on paper: February 2025.

Published on-line: January 2025.

Citation:
M.A.E. Elabbas, L. Olmos, I.J. Pérez-Arriaga, InfraFair: Infrastructure cost allocation. SoftwareX. Vol. 29, pp. 102069-1 - 102069-9, February 2025. [Online: January 2025]