9.8) Analysing: Parameters

Congratulations, you built a model which allows you to explore how the PV adoption depends on different subsidy schemes and we can start and answer our research question. You can start by playing around with the two subsidy parameters and will find a wide range of adoption results from 25-30% (both parameters minimal) to more than 90% houses with PV with both parameters maximal. This gives an idea about the range of possibly adoption patterns but we need a more systematic way to explore what an optimal subsidy scheme (maximal PV generation with minimal investment) would be.

To do that we systematically vary the two parameters between the extreme values and observe the key outputs. Netlogo provides us with a fantastic tool to do that which is called BehaviourSpace. The user manual says: “BehaviorSpace runs a model many times, systematically varying the model's settings and recording the results of each model run. This process is sometimes called "parameter sweeping". It lets you explore the model's "space" of possible behaviours and determine which combinations of settings cause the behaviours of interest.” So this is exactly what we need.