Energy Flexibility Management and Optimization

 

The team "Energy Flexibility Management and Optimization“ focuses on the development of management and optimization solutions for various energy systems configurations, spacing from home and buildings to electric vehicles fleets and charging infrastructures, covering small areas and neighbourhoods up to entire distribution grids.

 

Among the research activities covered by the team there are the development of models and algorithms for simulating and operating multi-energy systems, the deployment and testing of scheduling solutions for multi-energy systems, the design of optimal strategies for flexible assets management, including stationary storage as well as electric vehicles. Additionally, the team conducts research in the area of data-driven applications for grid monitoring and automation, such as state estimation algorithms and machine learning based forecasting tools.

 

Team Leader: Sebastian Schwarz

 

Research Projects of the Team

 

ISGAN

ISGAN, Annex 6: Power T&D Systems, is an initiative of the International Energy Agency to promote solutions that enable power grids to maintain and improve the security, reliability and quality of electric power supply while facing challenges related to significant trends in the industry, like expanding electrification of the energy system to unserved areas, integration of large amounts of renewable energy sources and distributed generation, electrification of heat and transport, increased customer participation, replacing aging infrastructure and integration of emerging, real-time information technology systems. It works through knowledge sharing to facilitate the application of advanced technologies needed for power grids to contribute in the best way to the attainment of clean energy, climate goals and sustainable energy access to all. More

 

TransUrban.NRW

The primary objective of TransUrban.NRW is to replace the classic district heating supply in traditional mining areas, which is often operated at temperatures of more than 100 degrees Celsius, with so-called LowEx networks, or 5th generation heating networks, and in this way significantly improve the CO2 balance of cities. The low-temperature networks required for this will either be newly built or integrated into the existing infrastructure. These new networks will be designed as energy exchange platforms through which all connected players can interact with each other. This is made possible by intelligent networking, which balances the heating and cooling requirements of buildings and thus increases the efficiency of the overall systems. This technology not only reduces energy losses, it also enables the integration of geothermal heat sources and/or the use of waste heat. Both are available on a comparatively large scale at low temperature levels. Fifth-generation heat networks can integrate renewable energies and waste heat into a supply system at all temperature levels. More

 

FLOW

FLOW is a four-year project, started in July 2022, aiming to provide highly replicable and user-centric products, concepts and mechanisms for the needs of all actors involved in electric mobility, ranging from power distribution system operators, charging point operators, mobility service providers, infrastructure manufacturers to final users. This project is a joint initiative of 30 European partners, including companies, research organizations and associations from 9 different countries. More

 

Sustain2

Sustain2 is the second phase of the project Sustain, focused on robust optimization of district energy systems and the development of a city-district energy management system, as well as the development of a cloud demonstration platform for storing and visualizing large amounts of energy and building data. Sustain2 aims to validate the cloud platform and city-district energy management systems developed in phase one on the field. It is implemented in Bottrop, where administrative buildings are equipped with sensors in order to collect and analyze the data in the cloud, and trigger energy saving measures. More

 

MoMeWEC

MoMeWEC proposes a compact solution for large-scale electric vehicle (EV) charging based on modular multilevel converter (MMC) and inductive power transfer (IPT) charging technologies. More

 

CoordiNet

Large-scale demonstrations of innovative network services through demand response, storage and small-scale distributed generation

CoordiNet is a H2020 European Project which will demonstrate how DSOs and TSOs shall coordinate to procure grid services reliably and efficiently. The large scale implementation of “TSO-DSO-Consumer” demonstrations involves market participants and end users. The complete value chain of TSO-DSO-market participants constitutes the backbone of the project in three demonstration macro-areas (Spain, Sweden, Greece), with ten demonstration pilots representing very different conditions of grid, climate, load and generation. More