Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Plan4Res (SYNERGISTIC APPROACH OF MULTI-ENERGY MODELS FOR AN EUROPEAN OPTIMAL ENERGY SYSTEM MANAGEMENT TOOL)

Teaser

EU’s targets are calling for changes in our energy system: more flexibility, more active involvement of stakeholders and more collaboration to enable least-cost integration of variable renewable energy sources. It is then necessary to:•strengthen coordination across...

Summary

EU’s targets are calling for changes in our energy system: more flexibility, more active involvement of stakeholders and more collaboration to enable least-cost integration of variable renewable energy sources. It is then necessary to:
•strengthen coordination across energy vectors (electricity, gas, heat, transport);
•develop innovative approaches for procuring flexibility services from both traditional and new sources;
•deal with increased level of uncertainty.
Operating the system with high shares of RES will only be possible and affordable if grid and generation evolve towards a system designed to maximise its capacity to host RES. This requires optimizing existing assets and new investments, making the best use of flexibilities (considering geographical location and services they provide to the system). We believe that an integrated representation of the system is necessary to achieve this, and that it is needed by all the stakeholders participating in the system operation and development.
However, such an integrated representation will require overcoming significant technical hurdles in order to allow a set of different but highly interconnected models (strategic investment – operational simulation – multi-modal system integration) to work synergistically while retaining the modularity (representing only sub-parts of the system, either functionally, geographically or on a specific time horizon, with a specific time resolution, or replacing a model/algorithm by another one) which is necessary for tailoring the tool to the different needs of stakeholders.
The objective is to develop this modular tool to help stakeholders of the energy system (TSOs, DSOs, Utilities, Energy providers…) taking better decisions regarding development and operation of their energy portfolio, also considering emerging technologies and innovative flexibility sources while maintaining a high level of reliability.

Work performed

Three case studies have been defined in detail, with the objective of validating the tool’s functionalities and relevance regarding its foreseen uses, especially: multi-energy integration, investment planning under uncertainties, flexibility cost integration within a pan-European approach. Common assumptions have been stated and a storyline linking the 3 case studies has been defined.
For each of the 3 case studies, we have highlighted the specific questions that each case study aims at answering to, the methodology for answering the questions, including a description of the used tools and models, the various sensitivities planned, as well as specific data & data sources and the expected results.

The general structure of the model framework (interactions between models) and a description of all models (functional and mathematical) was written.
It comprises 3 investment/expansion-related models and a European unit commitment model optimizing the operation of all assets, (including all necessary submodels), as well as models used for generating input data, or to perform ex-post analysis (e.g. transmission grid calculations for electricity and gas).

The list of necessary data has been validated and necessary data sources have been identified. Most necessary data have been collected and (whenever possible) shared among the consortium using a dedicated data platform implemented for the project. Data Formats have been described. Most necessary data transformations have been specified and the first transformation has been implemented and is now being tested.

Regarding solving algorithms:
-SCIP Optimization Suite 6.0.1 (for solving Linear and mixed-integer linear programming) has been implemented and released. It allows 18% and 66% speedup on hard MIPs and MINLP thanks to new primal heuristics and new selection criterion for cutting planes, that are most appropriate for the kind of problem to be solved within the project. A Parallel Presolving Library was also implemented and the development version made available for plan4res use.
-StOpt , a stochastic optimization library for solving large seasonal storage problems, has been integrated to the plan4res environment.
-NDOSolver/FiOracle, which will be used for solving the problems induced by decomposition algorithms has been released as an open-source library.

The specification of all software components has been written and delivered to the consortium. It describes the overall workflow/dataflow, all the components of the system and their interaction.
The first implementation steps have been achieved: software tools for workflow coordination have been implemented as well as the initial version of the demonstrator code.

Final results

Plan4Res brings the following advances to energy modelling tools:
• A natural decomposition, allowing for larger scale models;
• The dynamic of power system development and transformation, in particular without perfect foresight
• A representation of the connections between energy systems and the impact on available flexibility
• An infra-national representation of the grid, including transmission and distribution (although simplified)
• A proper representation of flexibility needs and capacity of the system

It relies on the most advanced mathematical programming algorithms :
• Lagrangian based decomposition and Benders decomposition;
• Improved SDDP algrithms
• Improved MILP solving tools
As well as on advanced distributed parallel computing and efficient workflow algorithms.

Expected results:
- Implement an end-to-end planning and operation tool, composed of a set of optimization models based on an integrated modelling of the European Energy System
- Implement an IT platform for providing seamless access to data and HPC resources, catering for flexible models (easily replacing submodels and algorithms) and workflows
- Implement the most adapted and efficient solving algorithms, based on improved mathematical programming
- Produce a public database that will feed the tool and can also be used by external users
- Perform Case studies to show the tool’s functionalities and relevance regarding the key advances included in plan4res: multi-energy integration, investment planning under uncertainties, flexibility cost integration within a pan-European approach.

Potential Impacts:
Plan4Res will provide all stakeholders an advanced modelling platform of the European energy system accounting for a large set of resources not accounted for in existing tools. This may lead to impacts not only on usual processes like planning and operation, but also on the ability to assess foreseen evolution, including regulatory and organisational ones.
Plan4Res will contribute to the energy efficiency targets by 2030 with a more efficient energy system integration, thus facilitating the quantitative and in-depth analysis of scenarios related to the future of the energy system by helping to understand the impact of eg. changes in legal framework, energy markets (new flexibility products), and technological developments (efficiency) on the system and business.
The project aims at steadily increasing the pan-European transmission network capacity and electric system flexibility at affordable costs, by providing a tool that will sheds light on the future reliability performances of the EU electricity transmission network, taking advantage of all existing and future flexibilities, where cohesion with other energy sources and interconnections are enhanced.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.plan4res.eu.