Introduction

Maon is an integrated environment designed for fundamental analysis of electricity wholesale markets. It enables the forecasting of dispatches, capacity expansions, and probability distributions. The resolution reaches the facility-level with quarter-hourly time steps, covering local portfolios to entire continents.

Web browsers provide access to the cloud-based data management, simulation, and analysis environment. It provides high-speed, high-resolution, and large-scale foresights. Scenarios can be parameterized by multiple users at the same time, calculated by one click, and collaboratively visually analyzed.

Users get support by work-leveraging parameterization tools, comprehensive quality checks, and interactive visualizations. Maon calculates not only deterministic and stochastic results like prices, dispatches, and capacities, but also costs, revenues, capture rates, net present values, and many other parameters.

Maon is developed, operated, and maintained by the Maon-Team.

Use cases

Maon can be used for short-term forecasts and long-term scenario analysis. These results enable a variety of different applications for transmission networks:

• Techno-economic assessments of grid investment projects like ENTSO-E Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA)
• Transmission network expansion plannings like ENTSO-E Ten-Year Network Development Plan (TYNDP)
• Bidding zone delimitation analysis like ENTSO-E Bidding Zone Review (BZR)
• Security of supply assessments like ENTSO-E European Resource Adequacy Assessments (ERAA)

Equally, it can assess the market value of consumers, storages, and generators. Examples of public applications by users are available on our homepage.

Uniqueness

Maon empowers users to make substantiated, traceable, and resilient decisions with consistent insights into electricity wholesale markets. It is based on following distinctive key features:

• Realistic: Maon delivers highly realistic market simulations by meeting challenges such as negative spot prices, individual facility investments, and uncertainty quantifications. With accurate assumptions, annual base power prices can be forecasted within an accuracy of less than one Euro per megawatt-hour.
• Fast: Maon eliminates the need for reading source code or installing additional software. It operates seamlessly through commonly used web browsers. Its automation minimizes manual data handlings, streamlines simulations, and accelerates data validation and analysis. It enables faster, more confident decision-making. For example, users can parameterize and initiate sensitivity analyses in under one minute.
• Integrated: Leveraging a unified data source and integrated simulation method, Maon provides comprehensive forecasts across various markets. It includes intraday, day-ahead, frequency reserves, and futures markets, as well as investment outcomes. This integrated, single-source, end-to-end approach ensures consistency in dispatch, investment, and uncertainty forecasts, leading to robust decisions.

Characteristics

• Fundamental: Market simulation based on the fundamentals of economics and technology with transparent interfaces to quantify influences, retrace results and decide rationally.
• High resolution: Comprehensive models for consumers, renewables, hydropower, batteries, thermal power plants and grid elements to assess individual components and to forecast accurately.
• Large-scale: Simulation of the market coupling in whole Europe with the same high spatial and temporal resolution to avoid biased results and assess equally.
• Web application: Multi-user, multi-interface and multi-format environment for collaborative, parallel and fast simulations.
• All-in-one: High-performance computing, data storing, simulation application, data management and interactive analysis linked and integrated into single solution.
• Productive: Scenario tree handling through inheritance to keep scenarios consistent to each other, re-use data, and minimize manual parametrization efforts.
• Automated: Parametrization and start of sensitivities in below one minute. Simulation resolution can be varied for runs between minutes and hours. Interactive result graphs load in seconds.
• Made in Germany: Model research, software development and data security are made in Germany. All web, calculation and storage servers of Maon are physically located in Germany.

Coverage

This documentation provides a systematic introduction and explanation to the fundamentals of electricity markets in reality as well as its simulation though data, models and their application at Maon. This documentation makes references to more detailed articles on Wikipedia and other external sources.

Requirements

To use Maon, ensure that you have a device with an active internet connection and an up-to-date browser such as Chromium, Edge, or Firefox. If you are able to load and read this documentation, your device supports Maon.

If only the web API is needed, any HTTPS client with internet access is sufficient to use all backend functions.

No additional installations beyond the aforementioned requirements are necessary.

How to get access?

To start using the application, please contact us via email or sign up. We will get in touch with you and provide access to the platform.