Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SmILES (Smart Integration of Energy Storages in Local Multi Energy Systems for maximising the Share of Renewables in Europe’s Energy Mix)

Teaser

The SmILES proposal contributes to the (LCE 33) “European Common Research and Innovation Agendas (ECRIAs) in support of the implementation of the SET Action Plan” with the aim to merge knowledge about smart integration of storage in hybrid energy system (heat and...

Summary

The SmILES proposal contributes to the (LCE 33) “European Common Research and Innovation Agendas (ECRIAs) in support of the implementation of the SET Action Plan” with the aim to merge knowledge about smart integration of storage in hybrid energy system (heat and electricity) on national level for a reasonable instrumentation of storage and renewable energy technologies on European level.

Current energy systems are operated and controlled with a focus on only one form of energy (electricity or heat). Future highly integrated energy system must make the best use of various energy storage technologies in collaboration. As operation and control strategies for hybrid energy systems comprising thermal and electrical storages as well as the cross-linking technologies, which allow load shifts between thermal and electrical nets exist currently only at a conceptual stage, optimized operation and control strategies have to be worked out and applied to system configurations to proof the benefit of a hybrid energy system.

Our long-term goal is to build up knowledge and lessons learned on the integration of heterogeneous energy sources and their storage technologies, and to exchange best practices for modelling and simulation. Hereby the members of the SmILES project aim to strengthen the joint European research landscape.

We are active partners in four European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) Joint Programmes and follow the long-term goal of common cooperation in JP-overlapping subjects. The project team is committed to extending the work of the EERA network by bringing together additional EERA members and European stakeholders, energy suppliers and industry.

Work performed

One of the main goals of the SmILES project is to combine the modelling and simulation expertise of five research partners - AIT, DTU, EDF, KIT and VITO. Achieving this is not straightforward: Each of the partners has a different research focus, simulation approach, choice of toolchain etc. Furthermore, each of the partners introduces a different system configuration, each with a particular set of possibilities and limitations. Use cases representing the individual partners’ research interests have been shown to overlap but to differ considerably in details such as the modelling depth, temporal and geographical scale etc.

The main instrument for achieving this goal will be so-called cross-simulation, i.e. the replication of one partner’s system configuration/use case combination in another partner’s simulation tool in order to provide complementary results. Due to the large differences in simulation approaches and tools, the direct exchange of simulation code - i.e. implemented simulation models - is not considered to be feasible. Instead, the source simulation setup and many of the underlying assumptions must be documented in sufficient detail to allow a complete reconstruction in the target environment.

Identifying a reliable method for cross-simulation between partners will be a large step towards meeting another main goal of the project: Dissemination of reference simulation models to a wider research audience outside of the consortium. This can be seen as another cross-simulation exercise, with the added difficulty of much less support being available to the implementer in the target environment, especially after the end of the SmILES project. This further raises the bar for the quality of the documentation.

Final results

Our Research Objective

Current energy systems are operated and controlled with a focus on only one form of energy, such as electricity or heat. Future energy systems will be operated in highly integrated ways and must be controlled in smart ways in order to optimise the use of various forms of generation and storage technologies. Operation and control strategies for so-called hybrid energy systems currently exist only on a conceptual stage.

Currently, various modelling tools and methods to simulate multi-energy systems with storage are under development. As part of this, our research teams develop, compare and cross-test models and algorithms for the optimised design, operation and control of five local hybrid energy systems in Denmark, France, Germany and Austria.

These cover different types of local systems, including urban neighbourhoods, a rural village, office buildings, and a small industrial production site. Thus, we think that there is much to learn from an exchange of experiences, and from a better coordination of these approaches.

In fact, local energy systems do not and will not operate in isolation from society or the larger energy network. To embed our research work in a larger context we will:
•set up a shared data and information platform to ensure that our results and the wealth of data are disseminated and accessible for interested experts and future research,
•analyse the user aspects and the regulatory framework that impacts the control and operation of our exemplary local energy systems, and
•up-scale our main findings from the local to a national level on the exemplary case of Belgium to gain a better understanding about the impact of our (local) results on the larger energy system.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.ecria-smiles.eu.