• Energy Research

This dataset underpins the report provided to the project "Analysis of the water-power nexus in the North, Eastern and Central African Power Pools" The report provides insights into the balance between energy supply and demand, power generation, total system costs, water consumption and withdrawal as well as carbon dioxide emissions for the North, Eastern and Central African power pools.

The ongoing climate change, together with the global increase in energy consumption and unpredictable fossil fuel prices have been the main drivers for the implementation of power exchange, market coupling, energy efficiency measures and larger use of renewable energy. All these targets bring up the need for the development of new modelling frameworks and governance systems that will be based on competitive, secure and sustainable national action plans. For this purpose, the Dispa-SET model has been applied to six countries in the Western Balkans region. In the first scenario, the model has been validated for the year 2010. The second scenario has been developed according to the targets from national energy strategies for the years 2020 and 2030, while the third scenario has been developed with the purpose of determining the maximum share of renewable energy sources in the regional power mix. Simulation results indicate that the integration of additional wind and solar capacities, compared to the short and long-term national strategies for the years 2020 and 2030, can be achieved without compromising the stability of the system.

Abstract The operation and economic profitability of modern energy systems is constrained by the availability of renewable energy and water resources. Lower water availability due to climate change, higher demand and increased water consumption for non-energy and energy needs may cause problems in Africa. In most African power systems, hydropower is a dominant renewable energy resource, and interconnection capacities are usually limited or unreliable. This paper describes a new modelling framework for analysing the water-energy nexus in the African Power Pools. This framework includes soft linking between two models: the LISFLOOD model is used to generate hydrological inputs and the Dispa-SET model is used for mid-term hydrothermal coordination and optimal unit commitment and power dispatch over the whole African continent. The results show a good agreement between the model outputs and the historical values, despite data-related limitations. Furthermore, the simulations provide hourly time series of electricity generation at the plant level in a robust way. It appears that some African power pools heavily rely on the availability of freshwater resources, while others are less dependent. In the long term, the dependence of the power system on water resources is likely to increase to meet the increasing electricity demand in Africa.

Abstract District heating plays a crucial role in future energy systems due to its beneficial impacts on the overall flexibility and efficiency of the energy system as a whole. In order to fully utilize its benefits, the sizing and operation of said systems needs to be optimized. This is a computationally difficult task due to a large number of parameters that need to be considered and calculated. Another issue is a need for long optimization horizons of at least one year, in order to capture seasonal, and a small time step of 1 h or less, to capture intraday variations. The goal of this work has been the development and demonstration of an optimization model capable of handling both the sizing and the operation of a district heating system based on a heat only boiler, solar thermal collectors, electric heaters, heat pumps and thermal energy storage units while considering building refurbishment. The model has been implemented on nine scenarios. The results of the analysis have demonstrated the economic and environmental benefits of the utilization of highly efficient and renewable energy sources in the proposed system.

Abstract This work examines the role of centralised cogeneration plants as one of the potential pathways of a future decarbonised energy system. Even in this context, thermal power plants will still exist and the utilisation of their excess heat via district heating networks can assist the decarbonisation of the built environment. In particular, the potential of existing thermal power plants to operate as combined heat and power (CHP) plants is assessed and their impact on the power system quantified. To do so, the European heat demand for the built environment is described, focused on the heat demand supplied with fossil fuels, and the European power sector is discussed. Then, a power system model (Dispa-SET) is used to evaluate this coupling pathway in terms of operating costs, efficiencies and associated CO2 emissions. The analysis is developed for the current and future European power system. Results show that the conversion of thermal into CHP plants increases the efficiency and reduces both the operating costs and the environmental impact of the energy system. Not only that, it also offers alternative flexibility options when coupled with thermal storage. Still, large investments regarding the deployment of thermal networks are required to leverage the full CHP potential.

The heating sector of the European Union covers 80% of the household’s final energy consumption, which shows its relevance for the energy transition to the carbon neutral society, as set out in the Green Deal. Since most of the heat demand is located in the high heat density areas, district heating shows to be a promising solution for reducing the environmental impact of this sector, as it enables the utilisation of renewable energy sources and the use of high efficiency production technologies. An especially interesting source for district heating is excess heat from various industries and tertiary sector buildings, which has a significant technical potential. However, to enable excess heat producers to supply their heat to district heating, third-party access needs to be granted, which calls for a deregulated heat market.This work consists of analysing two different bidding strategies which can be applied on the heat market: total cost and marginal cost biding. The focus here is to research the feasibility of the excess heat sources when different bidding strategies are used, especially when low temperature excess heat is considered, which has variable hourly costs due to the electricity demand for operating a heat pump. The results show that, despite the increased capacity factor of low temperature excess heat when marginal cost biding is used, it remains infeasible when supplying heat to the high temperature district heating networks through a heat market. Therefore, lower temperature district heating is a necessity for a feasible utilisation of low temperature excess heat. Finally, the effect of the power market prices on the low temperature excess heat feasibility was analysed and it was shown that it is significant, which led to the conclusion that introducing a higher share of renewables into the power market could foster the utilisation of these heat sources.

Abstract Background Local biomass potential in Southeastern European countries is relatively high. Nevertheless, biomass residues such as wood leftovers, straw and energy crops are often not properly managed or inefficiently utilised for energy purposes in individual house heating or domestic hot water preparation. This is more relevant in rural areas, where the utilisation of biomass resources is mainly based upon traditional technologies, has low efficiency or is carried out by using individual bases without local energy supply management. Usage of biomass residues in combination with other renewable energy sources is in agreement with the targets of the EU’s Energy and Climate Goals and promotes rural development and a circular economy. Methods For this purpose, local heating and domestic hot water preparation demands, as well as the available biomass potentials, were analysed and mapped by using a geographic information system (GIS). A model for analysing the optimal operation of the district heating boiler with a relatively high share of solar energy, which is backed up by either a short- or long-term heat storage, was developed. The model takes the supply and the return temperatures from the DH network into account and decides whether the excess of solar heat produced by the prosumers can be delivered into the network. This reduces heat overproduction and enables a smooth and uninterrupted operation of the system. Such configuration would benefit both the DH Company and the prosumers. The DH Company would have the opportunity to buy cheaper excess heat from the prosumers rather than to start its own and relatively slow biomass boiler. Results In this paper, several scenarios are proposed for the Romanian village Ghelinta. The target village is characterised by a small-scale biomass district heating boiler with thermal storage and prosumers with either solar thermal collectors or locally installed heat pumps. Integration of seasonal thermal storage and local prosumers can smooth out the biomass district heating boiler operation and bring additional socio-economic benefits for the bioenergy village communities. This could be the first step towards the establishment of a micro-scale thermal energy market. Conclusions Analysis has proven that the proposed system configuration is socio-technically feasible, even for micro-scale systems, as apparent in the Romanian target village Ghelinta. The main objective of this research is to analyse the implementation of a small-scale biomass and renewable energy-based district heating system and to prove the concept of bioenergy villages from a technical and economical perspective. Furthermore, the role of residential household prosumers has been analysed. Based on outcomes, the transferability of the results is also discussed, while several suggestions for stakeholders who implement such projects were formulated for future research as well.

The mass-scale integration of electric vehicles into the power system is a key pillar of the European energy transition agenda. Yet, the extent to which such integration would represent a burden for the power system of each member country is still an unanswered question. This is mainly due to a lack of accurate and context-specific representations of aggregate mobility and charging patterns for large electric vehicle fleets. Here, we develop and validate against empirical data an open-source model that simulates such patterns at high (1-min) temporal resolution, based on easy-to-gather, openly accessible data. We hence apply the model – which we name RAMP-mobility – to 28 European countries, showing for the first time the existence of marked differences in mobility and charging patterns across those, due to a combination of weather and socio-economic factors. We hence quantify the impact that fully-electric car fleets would have on the demand to be met by each country's power system: an uncontrolled deployment of electric vehicles would increase peak demand in the range 35–51%, whilst a plausible share of adoption of smart charging strategies could limit the increase to 30–41%. On the contrary, plausible technology (battery density) and infrastructure (charging power) developments would not provide substantial benefits. Efforts for electric vehicles integration should hence primarily focus on mechanisms to support smart vehicle-to-grid interaction. The approach is applicable generally beyond Europe and can provide policy makers with quantitatively reliable insights about electric vehicles impact on the power system. ; Energie and Industrie