The Open ENTRANCE project is almost complete! In this edition of our newsletter, we present you with final updates from half of our case studies – the rest will come in this newsletter's final edition, at the end of June. We also offer you a short roundup of our workshop at the EU parliament.
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Updates from the case studies
OpenENTRANCE's case studies will be fully described in our upcoming deliverable D6.2: "Case study results", which is due to be released by 1 May. The report will be available on the OpenENTRANCE website.
Case study 2: Community of actors
This case study aimed to analyse energy communities on a local level as well as on the country and European levels. Communities of actors, as mentioned in this case study's title, include energy communities where prosumers are active participants in the energy system (actors) and members trade self-generated PV electricity with each other (peer-to-peer trading).
The overall objective included studying a variety of energy community patterns and setups (including annual phase-in and phase-out of community actors resulting in frequent reallocations of the default setup), and upscaling the potential of energy communities for different European countries based on building stock, PV potential, electricity consumption. Subsequently, the quantitative potential of local energy communities was conducted for Europe as a whole.
The case study involved the energy community model FRESH:COM, which considers the electricity sector, and only at the local level.
The framework of the case study includes voluntary participation of prosumers in energy communities and the consideration of individual willingness-to-pay. Hence, we assumed low entry barriers (no closed systems, but energy sharing within parts of the distribution network). As part of the case study, also dynamic phase-in and phase-out of members was analysed. The local energy community model was then used to find the country-wide potential of energy communities in five European reference countries. Here, the potential of energy communities represented an estimated upper-bound for welfare gains that would result from a large-scale deployment of energy communities.
The main results include insights into electricity trading in energy communities, economic balances and emissions savings. Also, we derive the theoretical potential of energy communities for selected countries and the respective savings from consumer/prosumer point of view. We found that, in theory, approximately up to 11.5 million residential energy communities could be implemented in Europe. Depending on the settlement pattern structure of energy communities, self-consumption of PV generation in communities could increase by up to 70%.
Future extension of this work could include how "price cannibalism" could effect energy communities. Also, extensions to include sector coupling could be implemented in the energy community model.
Case study 4: Need for flexibility – sector coupling
Given the ongoing transformation of energy systems towards a climate-neutral and sector-integrated future, case study 4 is a sensitivity analysis based on openENTRANCE’s Techno-Friendly 1.5°C pathway assessing the impact of three crucial determinants for the pan-European energy system development. These determinants cover electric vehicle charging flexibility in individual road transport sectors, cross-border exchange capacity for electricity trade between national markets, and prices of renewable hydrogen imports from outside of Europe for end-use demands that cannot be abated by direct use of renewable electricity. The coupling of the modelling frameworks SCOPE SD (Fraunhofer IEE) and plan4EU (EDF) together with input data from the GENeSYS-MOD (TU Berlin) demonstrates that both open and proprietary modelling frameworks can be linked via the openENTRANCE platform.
The case study shows that hydrogen import prices are responsible for the largest energy system changes in the climate-neutral system and determines Europe’s energy import dependency. Low prices lead to higher hydrogen demand and a high share of imports from future global markets. Higher cross-border exchange capabilities and transport sector charging flexibility have moderate effects, i.e. they increase the direct use of renewable electricity and reduce the need for indirect electrification applications (i.e. hydrogen demand). Hydrogen import prices exhibit the strongest impact on regional electricity price distributions with cross-border trade and electric vehicle flexibility having only smaller effects on the volatility in the distribution tails.
Case study 6: Innovative technologies
The development of new urban areas can lead to costly investments in the electricity distribution grid to have the capacity to supply the new demand in the area. Simultaneously, many large scale sources of heat remain unused. Case study 6 is set in this context. The Furuset area, a neighbourhood of Oslo, is set to grow significantly in the next decades to host new housing units and businesses, leading to a potential underdimensioned distribution grid. At the same time, large amounts of heat from waste incineration are lost in the summer due to low demand. Case study 6 investigates the economic viability of the installation of a seasonal thermal energy storage (STES) of this waste heat to supply the new demand in Furuset and its impact on the need for grid reinforcement.
The economic viability of three alternatives were analysed:
- Direct electric heating and potential need for reinforcement
- Connection to the district heating (DH) network
- DH network and STES
The Integrate tool developed by SINTEF Energy was used for this analysis.
Results indicate that while not cost optimal, DH and STES reduced peak power demand by 28% and 31% respectively. STES increases the utilisation of excess waste heat. Higher electricity prices increase the profitability of STES, making it a good option to hedge against such peaks in prices. An additional benefit of the STES is a reduction of emissions compared to a direct use of the district heating system by replacing peaking boilers.
More details about the case study can be found in the article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.segy.2022.100075
Case study 7: Integration of electricity and heating sectors
Decarbonising the European energy system requires large-scale electrification across sectors combined with the utilisation of different sources of energy system flexibility, such as cross-border power exchange, smart charging of electric vehicles, energy storage and demand response. Such flexibility is particularly relevant for the Danish energy system due to its role as an electricity transit hub for power exchange between its neighbours alongside its significant wind power potentials.
In this case study, we analysed the role of demand-flexible electrified heating (heat storage and end-consumer demand response from district heating piping water and residential building envelopes) in the Danish electricity system of 2050. For this analysis, we applied Frigg, a novel modelling approach for integrating demand response models in energy system analysis. Traditionally, large-scale energy system modelling assumes demand response as shifting load between different time steps or as energy storage, meaning as a direct control problem. Frigg’s underlying paradigm is that demand response is rather an indirect control problem, where consumers react to time-varying prices of energy, those prices being the control variable of the problem. Frigg is used to couple Plan4EU, an electricity dispatch model for Europe, with the flexibility function that models power-to-heat demand response in Denmark. Frigg also determines cost-optimal heat storage capacities.
Our results suggest Danish electrified heat demand flexibility would influence both the Danish and European electricity dispatch notably, though the relative effect on the continental level would be minor. Power-to-heat demand flexibility substantially supports Danish power system operation, mostly through more efficient cross-border trade: The introduction of heat storage decreases operational domestic electricity cost modelled by ca. 15% in comparison to a reference case.
The modelling framework of this study comes with some limitations that could be addressed in two main lines of future research: Firstly, the Danish building stock and heating system could be modelled at higher detail. That includes representing individual and district heating individually and estimating demand response parameters from data. Secondly, our proposed modelling approach could be evaluated against other methods and against real-world observations.
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Workshop at the EU parliament
Open ENTRANCE held a workshop at the EU parliament in Brussels on 7 February. Research scientists involved in the project presented an overview of the fundamental changes that the energy system must undergo to reach climate targets, as well as the expected economic impacts of these changes.
After the presentations, a panel debate was held under the theme "Decarbonisation of the European energy system – Is Europe on track according to the required transformation?". Participants were:
- Mario Labatut, EDF EU Affairs
- Anne Bolle, Statkraft
- Mario Sisinni, ENTSO-W
- Timm Krägenow, TenneT
- Petter Støa, SINTEF (moderator)
Highlights from a selection of case studies were also presented to the audience.
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