The Grand Challenge of the Energy Transition

Bardi, Ugo

doi:10.3389/fenrg.2013.00002

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 20 publications

(20 reference statements)

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“…Although MOSES provides a quantitative evaluation of hydropower in particular in terms of its conversion volatility, we cannot give an accurate estimation of the Spanish nor the Catalan hydropower conversion volatility due to lack of available data. • Power network: Reliable penetration (and consequent high security) of variable renewable and non-renewable power sources depends on the flexibility of the whole electric system where they are embedded (Chandler, 2011). This flexibility depends on technological, geographical, institutional, and market factors and its systematic assessment presents a remarkable level of complexity.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Energy is currently driving the global economy at all scales and nourishes the developmental capabilities of every nation and society: it is needed to power all kinds of machinery, to supply the industrial system with commodities, for the food production system, and to foster and sustain information and communication technologies (Bardi, 2013). At the same time, our energy system is absolutely dependent on fossil fuels, a fact that clearly jeopardizes our subsistence for, at least, three different reasons (MacKay, 2009): (a) fossil fuels are a limited resource, their availability will be reduced in the short-term due to an increased cost of extraction and they will probably run out in the mid-term; (b) our dependence on one energy source endangers our security of energy supply; and (c) global warming due to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere from fossil-fuel burning is becoming the major threat to biodiversity and mankind as a result of climate change.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sovereignty, Robustness, and Short-Term Energy Security Levels. The Catalonia Case Study

2014

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Energy-related impacts and conflicts have been used to account for the emergence, maintenance, and collapse of complex societies. On the other hand in the last years, sustainability science has incorporated different frames of reference in order to facilitate the vision of sustainable futures. Most of them suggest that the search for satisfiers of human needs should be rooted on the local (a) construction of organic articulations of people with nature and technology and (b) generation of growing levels of social, economic, and energy selfreliance. This new regional kind of social agreement implies a redefinition of cultural norms and institutions, which at the same time leads toward increased levels of sovereignty for the social group engaged in this process. Sovereignty must not only be understood here in its political sense (as traditionally found in the literature) but also in its technological and energy acceptations. In this paper, we address this last constituent in terms of energy security levels and hierarchy in energy infrastructures between Spain and Catalonia, the latter being a Spanish autonomous community known for its sovereignty aspirations. We show a remarkable difference in energy security levels between both regions, which clearly hinders Catalonia's capacity to currently achieve a higher level of self-reliance in energetic terms. We suggest that this result is a consequence of the imperfect hierarchy that characterizes energy infrastructures at the spatial scale, and that it can be generalized to all regions where infrastructural systems have been historically assessed and developed under a nationwide planning scheme.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sovereignty, Robustness, and Short-Term Energy Security Levels. The Catalonia Case Study

2014

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“…k cannot be satisfied, the reward penalizes this situation with a cost of ten times larger than the cost of instantaneously buyingQ d k in the market. 2 Finally, as with standard RL algorithms, the reward at the last point in an episode is 0…”

Section: A2 Reward Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…W HILE the energy transition [1] has the potential to highly improve our society, e.g., by mitigating climate change, it also poses some potential problems that need to be tackled [2]. Especially, due to the weather dependence of renewable sources, a large integration of renewables implies more uncertain energy generation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimal Control Strategies for Seasonal Thermal Energy Storage Systems With Market Interaction

Lago

Suryanarayana²,

Sogancioglu

et al. 2021

IEEE Trans. Contr. Syst. Technol.

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Seasonal thermal energy storage systems (STESSs) can shift the delivery of renewable energy sources and mitigate their uncertainty problems. However, to maximize the operational profit of STESSs and ensure their long-term profitability, control strategies that allow them to trade on wholesale electricity markets are required. While control strategies for STESSs have been proposed before, none of them addressed electricity market interaction and trading. In particular, due to the seasonal nature of STESSs, accounting for the long-term uncertainty in electricity prices has been very challenging. In this article, we develop the first control algorithms to control STESSs when interacting with different wholesale electricity markets. As different control solutions have different merits, we propose solutions based on model predictive control and solutions based on reinforcement learning. We show that this is critical since different markets require different control strategies: MPC strategies are better for day-ahead markets due to the flexibility of MPC, whereas reinforcement learning (RL) strategies are better for real-time markets because of fast computation times and better risk modeling. To study the proposed algorithms in a real-life setup, we consider a real STESS interacting with the day-ahead and imbalance markets in The Netherlands and Belgium. Based on the obtained results, we show that: 1) the developed controllers successfully maximize the profits of STESSs due to market trading and 2) the developed control strategies make STESSs important players in the energy transition: by optimally controlling STESSs and reacting to imbalances, STESSs help to reduce grid imbalances.

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“…This subject is beyond the scope of the present paper, but it is a very general problem that involves the transition from a fossil fuel based economy to a renewable (or nuclear) based one. In general terms, the transition is ongoing [42,43] and it is involving a shift from chemical energy obtained from fossil carbon to electric power directly obtained from non-carbon fueled sources. This transition is obviously favoring applications which can directly use this electric power, such as electric vehicles.…”

Section: Consequences Of Pgm Scarcity: Moving To Electric Transportationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Precious Metals in Automotive Technology: An Unsolvable Depletion Problem?

Bardi

Caporali

2014

Minerals

Self Cite

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Abstract:Since the second half of the 20th century, various devices have been developed in order to reduce the emissions of harmful substances at the exhaust pipe of combustion engines. In the automotive field, the most diffuse and best known device of this kind is the "three way" catalytic converter for engines using the Otto cycle designed to abate the emissions of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and unburnt hydrocarbons. These catalytic converters can function only by means of precious metals (mainly platinum, rhodium and palladium) which exist in a limited supply in economically exploitable ores. The recent increase in prices of all mineral commodities is already making these converters significantly expensive and it is not impossible that the progressive depletion of precious metals will make them too expensive for the market of private cars. The present paper examines how this potential scarcity could affect the technology of road transportation worldwide. We argue that the supply of precious metals for automotive converters is not at risk in the short term, but that in the future it will not be possible to continue using this technology as a result of increasing prices generated by progressive depletion. Mitigation methods such as reducing the amounts of precious metals in catalysts, or recycling them can help but cannot be considered as a definitive solution. We argue that precious metal scarcity is a critical factor that may determine the future development of road transportation in the world. As the problem is basically unsolvable in the long run, we must OPEN ACCESSMinerals 2014, 4 389 explore new technologies for road transportation and we conclude that it is likely that the clean engine of the future will be electric and powered by batteries.

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The Grand Challenge of the Energy Transition

Cited by 12 publications

References 20 publications

Sovereignty, Robustness, and Short-Term Energy Security Levels. The Catalonia Case Study

Sovereignty, Robustness, and Short-Term Energy Security Levels. The Catalonia Case Study

Optimal Control Strategies for Seasonal Thermal Energy Storage Systems With Market Interaction

Precious Metals in Automotive Technology: An Unsolvable Depletion Problem?

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