An Offshore Energy Simulation Through Flow Networks: CEL Within the MSP Challenge 2050 Simulation Game Platform

The paper presents the design of CEL, an offshore energy simulation integrated into the MSP Challenge 2050 simulation game platform, which is used to help maritime spatial planning authorities and energy stakeholders learn about and test offshore energy grids. The authors model energy grids as flow networks, extending a standard maximum-flow formulation with three additions: an intermediary node representing each team's expected energy, a split of each object node into input and output parts to represent capacity limits on transformers, sockets and sources, and bidirectional edges for cables to support more complex grid designs with loops. The resulting network is solved with Dinic's algorithm, and when expected team values cannot be met, the simulation reports the actual flows and the residual energy as "wasted" energy to prompt players to revise their designs.

The authors report performance results based on analytical complexity and practical testing. The complexity of Dinic's algorithm rises from O(V²E) to O((V+T)²(E+T+V)) under the additions, where T is the number of teams, but in practice the energy simulation runs in under 30 milliseconds per simulated month for the average MSP Challenge session, including server data requests, on high-end hardware. The design was developed over roughly a year with input from energy experts in the NorthSEE and Baltic LINes consortia.

The paper acknowledges several limitations, including that the model simplifies real offshore energy systems and does not account for external influences such as fluctuating wind speeds, which may be handled by dynamically adjusting source capacities between simulated months. The authors also state that the tool is not intended as a full electrical engineering design system. Planned future work includes applying CEL in North Sea and Baltic Sea sessions at the end of 2018 and early 2019, and considering its use for fossil fuel decommissioning and broader offshore energy transition management.