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Local Energy Solutions

MarjoleinSchwachofer edited this page Aug 4, 2016 · 22 revisions

Table of Contents

Local Energy Solution

A Local Energy Solution (LES) is a locally defined energy system for which ETMoses performs load and financial calculations. A LES contains data on the local electricity, gas and heat infrastructure as well as the technologies that are connected to these infrastructures. In addition, the user can define several strategies to deal with potential congestion of the electricity network as well as to make most use of locally produced electricity. Finally, one can specify market models and apply these to the stakeholders within the LES. ETMoses gives the resulting businesscase for these stakeholders.

Scaling ETM scenarios to testing ground level

Every LES starts with a scaled scenario that is derived from a national scenario in the Energy Transition Model(ETM). The ETM allows you to create a new scenario or open an existing one. Such a scenario opens in the main interface of the ETM which looks as follows.

The ETM contains around 300 sliders that allow you to change as many parameters of the energy system. Specific instructions on how to use the ETM can be found in its own documentation repository.

Scaling the national scenario to testing ground level

The next step in the process is to scale the size of your local energy system. This can be done by selecting Scale this scenario under the Settings menu. Upon reaching the "Scale this scenario" page, you have the option to choose how many residences will be present in the scaled testing ground scenario (see Figure 1 below).

image

Figure 1. The scaling interface. Number of residences and sectors can be chosen.

It is possible to explicitly exclude the following sectors from the testing ground

  • Agriculture (excluded by default)
  • Energy sector (included by default but with scaled down numbers)
  • Industry (excluded by default)

Scaling of the national scenario to testing ground size happens as follows: all production and demand of energy is reduced by a fixed factor, which is the specified value for the scaling variable divided by the original value of the scaling variable.

If the national scenario, for instance, contains 10 million residences and your testing ground contains only 100 residences the scaling factor is given by:

scaling factor = 100 / 10,000,000 = 0.00001

All energy in the national scenario will be multiplied by 0.00001 to get the testing ground scenario. In addition to energy, the quantities of all technologies are scaled equivalently. For example, if the national scenario contains a million combi-boilers, using a scale factor of 0.00001 means there are only 10 combi-boilers are present in the testing ground scenario.

Note: It may happen that scaling results in fractional numbers (e.g., 123.4 combi boilers.). In those cases, the number will be rounded to the closest integer. Exceptions to this rule are large power plants. It is possible to place 0.3 nuclear power plants in the testing ground.

Excluding sectors from the testing ground

There are some sectors in the ETM that are less relevant for small-scale pilot projects:

  • Industry
  • Agriculture
  • Energy (centralized production of electricity and heat)

You can exclude these from your testing ground by using the checkboxes in the scaling interface. This means that these sectors will have no energy demand or production, and are omitted from the interface.

However, if you choose to include these sectors in the testing ground scenario, their energy demand and production will be scaled with the scaling factor as described above.

Note that when you have created a local energy solution from a scaled scenario that does not include the energy sector, selecting the merit price will not give meaningful results as the merit order is not available.

Adapting the testing ground scenario

The scaled scenario still has most of its properties equal to the national scenario that it originated from. The percentage of electric cars, or the number of solar panels is per household is still the same. You can now use the familiar professional interface of the ETM to update your testing ground scenario.

The interface for the testing ground scenario is identical to the standard ETM interface with some modifications:

  • The sectors excluded in the scaling step (optional) are removed from the interface
  • The "other" sector (this is a statistical residual and irrelevant for the LES)
  • The section on storage (it will be replaced by more detailed calculations for the LES)
  • The section on production of primary energy carriers is removed
  • The section on network costs (it is replaced by the more detailed calculations for the LES)
  • The section on fuel chain emissions is omitted

Connecting technologies to the network

Once you are satisfied with your local energy system, you can start creating a Local Energy Solution by coupling it to a network topology and market model. These are described in their respective section of this Wiki (topologies and market models). This coupling is done by selecting Save and open as local energy solution, which will open a new interface shown below.

You can choose a topology and market model from the drop-down menu. The scenario ID is filled out automatically. Hitting Continue... will couple the technologies from the local energy scenario to the end-points of the selected topology. The technologies are listed in a technology matrix and grouped by the various end-points in the topology as shown in the image below.

Each technology is described by a set of attributes which are listed below. The default values of these technologies have been researched by Quintel and their partners and are described in the subsections of the technologies section. Not all attributes are applicable to all technologies; when changing the values of these attributes, you should only change those that are already filled out and sometimes add the cost specifications.

  • Profile: a time profile describing the load that the technology exerts on the network (see profiles for more details)
  • Output capacity [kW]
  • Input capacity (electricity) [kW]
  • Units: number of units installed of this technology; all other attributes need to be specified for one unit of this technology
  • O&M Costs per year: operation & maintenance per year
  • Technical lifetime
  • Demand [kWh]: amount of energy produced or consumed annually by the technology
  • Volume [kWh]: amount of energy that can be stored in the technology
  • Initial investment: investment costs per unit of the technology
  • COP / Efficiency: coefficient of performance or efficiency of the technology as a decimal number

Note that you can change these attributes to fit your own needs. However, when you scale your scenario back into a national scenario (see the Quick start guide on how to do so), these changed attributes will be ignored.

You can add as many technologies as you want using the Add button that is available for each end-point. Note that the heating technologies need to be connected to a buffer and cannot operate stand-alone. You can also add a neighbourhood battery, which is not available in the Energy Transition Model and will therefore not be added automatically.

Once you are satisfied with the way the technologies are connected to the network, you can hit the Create local energy solution button at the bottom of the page. Do not forget to give the LES a recognizable name. You can always revisit the choices you regarding the topology, market model or technologies, by editing your LES under the Edit LES button.

Loads, flows and business cases

ETMoses calculates the loads on the various nodes in the electricity network and the pressure levels in the gas network as a results of the topology and the connected technologies. You can review the loads on these node by clicking on them. The loads and flows on the gas and heat networks (the latter is currently only available on the Beta server) are shown in their respective tabs. The final tab show the business case of all stakeholders in the LES. More details on the results of ETMoses can be found in the results section.

Editing your LES

You can always change the parameters of your LES by hitting the Edit LES button. This opens a new window, a screenshot of which is shown below.

Here you can adjust all parameters of your LES. The technologies have been described above and their default parameters are described in the subsections of the technologies section. The topologies, market models and business cases are described elsewhere. ETMoses also models the gas and heat network, albeit in a different way than the electricity network. The details of these networks are described in gas network and heat network respectively.