Meeting the Modeling Needs of Future Energy Systems

Abstract

Structural changes in the energy sector have created considerable challenges for regulators, energy consumers, and suppliers. Energy researchers rely on quantitative modeling approaches to address these challenges. At the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, we have developed several models to analyze today's and the future's energy markets to address the challenges for electricity networks as a result of intermittent renewable and decentralized power and heat supply and to find solutions for integrating demand response. This paper presents a survey of these approaches and discusses further challenges. The developed models have proved to be suitable for answering a range of research questions related to structural changes. As the energy sector remains in a constant state of flux, these models need to be further developed. This means coupling different energy sectors and markets and improving their technical accuracy as well as their spatial and temporal resolutions.

Developing a municipality typology for modelling decentralised energy systems

“…Chicco 2012) have shown that the Ward algorithm is not always the best choice for cluster analysis. Further work is also required to analyse the economic effects of municipal energy autonomy on the overarching energy system (for a discussion see Jägemann et al 2013, McKenna 2017.…”

“…The objective is to identify municipalities where energy autonomy aspirations could make technical and economic sense, and thereby to support the transferal of successful projects to other municipalities within the same cluster. In addition, a foundation for energy system models is developed which enables large-scale modelling of decentralized energy systems without the requirement for high spatial resolutions, which is often a central limitation in such models at the national scale and above (Keles et al 2017). Finally, representatives of municipalities can be encouraged to initiate energy autonomy projects themselves if they have already been successfully implemented in a similar municipality.…”

Utilising Distributed Flexibilities in the European Transmission Grid

“…To model the interconnected electricity market consisting of multiple market areas, we use a linear optimisation approach with the objective function of minimal total annual system cost under the assumptions of perfect foresight and perfect competition. 1 The system cost consist of the aggregated variable cost of electricity production C g for the electricity generation p g,t of generator g in time step t and the cost of load shedding C LS for the amount of load shedding p LS d,t of demand d in time step t.…”

“…To reduce the carbon intensity of the electricity generation, an increasing amount of electricity generation from renewable sources (RES-E) is being installed throughout Europe. The two most significant sources are wind and solar, both characterised by volatility and their spatially distributed generation potential [1]. On the demand side, decarbonisation efforts have begun to lead to an increased electrification in the heat and transportation sectors.…”

Sizing guidelines for grid‐connected decentralised energy storage systems: single house application

“…The three aforementioned newly introduced concepts have presented new challenges for the existing hierarchical, centrally controlled power grid [1–3]. One promising network topology which can potentially undertake the twenty‐first century energy challenges is the decentralised energy storage systems (ESS) [4, 5].…”