Design Principles

HAMLET is built on a set of core design principles that guide its flexibility, scalability, and usability. These principles shape how the tool is structured and how users can interact with it.

Modularity

HAMLET follows a modular architecture, allowing users to customize and extend the tool without modifying core functionality. Each component (Creator, Executor, Analyzer) operates independently, making it possible to modify or replace functionalities as needed.

Example:

  • Users can define new agent types without altering the overall simulation structure.

Agent-Based Modeling

Unlike traditional energy system models that rely on centralized optimization, HAMLET adopts an agent-based approach. This enables dynamic and decentralized decision-making by individual agents.

Example:

  • Different households may follow unique energy consumption and trading strategies, responding to price signals in real time.

Flexibility in Market and Grid Configurations

HAMLET supports a variety of market structures and grid configurations, making it adaptable to different research and practical applications.

  • Market mechanisms such as local energy markets (LEMs) and flexibility markets (LFMs) can be defined.

  • Grid constraints, tariff structures, and trading rules are configurable via structured YAML or JSON files.

Example:

  • Users can modify market clearing algorithms to study different auction types.

Scalability

HAMLET is designed to handle small- to mid-scale energy simulations efficiently. To improve scalability, simulations can leverage parallel execution across multiple processes.

Example:

  • Running 100+ agents in parallel to simulate distributed energy trading.

Transparency & Reproducibility

HAMLET follows open science principles, ensuring that all simulations are fully traceable and reproducible.

  • Configuration files store all simulation parameters.

  • Outputs are recorded in structured formats, enabling easy validation and replication.

Example:

  • Researchers can re-run the same simulation by using the stored input configurations and results.

Real-World Applicability

HAMLET is designed for practical use cases, including policy analysis, market design, and grid planning. It is structured to integrate real-world energy data and provide insights into decentralized energy systems.

Example:

  • Studying the impact of regulatory policies on local energy markets by simulating different tariff structures.