AIMMS-MOPTA Competition

AIMMS Announces the 2024 MOPTA Competition Winner! (This link takes you to the announcement on the AIMMS LinkedIn profile)

Selected Teams:

Winner: Team "HYDROGENius EdinbORgh"
Institution: University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Members: Bárbara Rodrigues, Daniel Kopisitskiy, and Denise Cariaga Sandoval
Advisor: Miguel F. Anjos

2nd Place: Team "DINGO"
Institution: Deakin University, Australia
Members: Felipe Bastarrica, Ryan Li, and Linhao Luo
Advisor: Vicky Mak

3rd Place: Team "TheClowder"
Institution: University of Pavia, Italy
Members: Bianca Urso and Gabor Riccardi
Advisor: Stefano Gualandi

16th AIMMS-MOPTA Optimization Modeling Competition

Would a Fully Renewable Energy Grid benefit from adding Green Hydrogen as a Supplemental Power Source?

Introduction

   To meet decarbonization targets, renewable energy technologies need to be integrated into electricity and gas grids on a large scale. The energy grid baseload needs stability that renewable energy sources cannot always provide. Decarbonizing the grid requires that coal and natural gas no longer provide baseload support to the energy grid. To operate a fully renewable energy grid, the baseload must be supported by a stable energy source. Green hydrogen could play a key role in decarbonizing heavy industry, as well as supporting baseload power. To design a fully renewable energy system, green hydrogen electrolyzers and fuel cells could be used to support the integration of intermittent electricity sources, namely, wind and solar.

See the full problem description for more information.

Problem description:   MOPTA_2024_Competition.pdf
Starter Project and Data files:  Microsoft OneDrive that contains the two files

Sponsor

Registration

You have to register here: registration

Solver Application Download

You are free to use any software of your choice, but it is recommended to use AIMMS for your submission. A starter-project in AIMMS has been provided, this project allows you to read the data into AIMMS and provides a simple UI. You can then develop your mathematical optimization model and build on the UI from within this starter-project. All source code and data must be included, properly documented, and results must be reproducible.

If you are unfamiliar with using AIMMS, we recommend that you look at some of our e-learning material:

• Modeling with AIMMS
• User Interface with AIMMS

You can also use the MOPTA group in AIMMS Community to ask questions about AIMMS or this challenge.

About AIMMS: AIMMS is an industry leading rapid model building and deployment platform perfected for over 30 years. AIMMS is an enjoyable and robust way to not only build optimization models but to deploy them as optimization applications to be used by business professionals. You can develop analytical models and highly interactive end user interfaces all within the same environment. Learn more and request a free academic license from here: AIMMS Academic License.

Submission

All files should be submitted by the deadline as a single email with a single attached zip file to Please start your submission email's subject line with [MOPTA Competition 2024]. The body of the email should forward the registration confirmation email received at registration time, as the way to authenticate the submitting team. Good luck!

Please review the Deliverables section of the Problem Description to ensure you provide all of the requested items for the solution.

Eligibility

Teams of at most three students can participate. The team leader must be a graduate student, though the other members of the team can be advanced undergraduate students. Each member of the team must be registered as a full-time student at a recognized educational institution during the Spring term of the 2023-2024 Academic Year. Students with any background are eligible. Collaboration between students from different departments is strongly encouraged.

Each team must declare a team advisor with which the team may consult about the problem and their solution. It is the team advisor’s responsibility to ensure that the students have appropriate knowledge for the competition. The team advisor should not be involved as a participant in the solution process.

As the conference is international, so is the competition. Teams from all over the world can participate, as long as at least one team member can come to the conference, should the team make it to the final round.

The official language of the competition is English.

Teams are asked to register to the competition as soon as they start working on the problem. There is a separate deadline for the submission of the solution (see Important dates).

If you have questions about the problem or the competition format in general, please contact Dr. Xiu Yang at . If you have questions about the AIMMS software and licensing related issues, please contact .

Competition Format

The competition consists of a few stages. In the first stage the teams are asked to develop models and solution methods (see the problem description above) and provide an implementation of the optimization models using the software you choose. The teams must submit a complete solution to the problem, including: implementation of the optimization models in the software you choose, ideally already including a graphical user interface that provides the user with graphical and textual output; solutions of the models for the given case study, and for other data sets generated by the teams, if any; a maximum 15 page report that discusses the models developed (along with mathematical background), the solutions obtained, and further recommendations.

The AIMMS implementation is recommended for the optimization models only: the teams can use any tool of their choice build the proposed model(s) and/or solution method or run machine learning algorithms on the case study provided if this is a part of their approach (documented source codes should still be included).

The teams should also keep in mind that opportunities to improve the solution approach and the interface will be offered in the next phase.

A panel of judges, including representatives from both the conference organizing committee and AIMMS evaluates the submissions, provides feedback to the teams and invites finalists to continue in the second stage of the project and present their work at a dedicated session of the conference. In this second stage, the finalists will receive advice from the panel on ways in which they can improve their model and solution and have time before the conference to continue to improve their solution.

After the presentations at the conference, the judges will ask questions. The finalists are ranked based on a combined score for their model, implementation, report, solution, oral presentation, and answers to the judges’ questions. The decision of the judges is final and cannot be appealed.

Please review the Deliverables section of the Problem Description to ensure you provide all of the requested items for the solution.

Prizes

Updated - January 23, 2024

All participants in the AIMMS-MOPTA 2024 competition that use AIMMS software in their submission will receive a gift by post. The top three groups will be invited to present (in-person) to a panel of judges at the MOPTA 2024 conference. The prizes will be awarded as follows:

Place	Used AIMMS Software	Did not Use AIMMS Software
1st	$1200	$600
2nd	$600	$300
3rd	$300	$150

Each finalist team will receive free registration for the conference for up to two team members.

Copyright

By submitting an entry to the competition you agree that the organizers own the copyright to a copy of your submission. This does not limit your rights to publish your work, give talks, posters, etc., but grants the organizers of the competition the right to use your work.