Renewable energy growth, challenging decarbonisation targets, and increasing requirements for system resilience in view of recent geopolitical scenarios require a systemic view of energy infrastructure planning, finding a balance between supply and transportation/distribution that can be markedly optimized by leveraging on the flexibility measures considered in a holistic approach to meet both electric, thermal and industrial production demand. Thus, there is an increasing need of developing Decision Support Tools (DSS) to handle complex models and algorithms, large amount of data and evaluate scenarios in a simple and easy to use form that can be used without specific IT skills.
The PlaMES tool fills a gap in the current DSSs market and is meant to become a reference for Transmission and Distribution System Operators (TSO & DSOs) strategic development, as well as institutions and organizations that aim to develop the decarbonisation transition pathways towards 2040 and beyond.
Future heat and electricity demand are analysed in conjunction with the adoption of renewables and full exploitation of “green supply” opportunities, employing a marked multi-energy approach that leverages on coupling technologies (power to heat, power to gas, heat pumps, Combined Heat and Power, …). Models manage an hourly granularity over a year-long horizon to take into account the complex dynamics of sector integration, seasonal behaviours and storage opportunities, within the constraints set by the user while configuring the scenario. Transmission and distribution expansion planning takes into account the optimized generation growth, returning the expected necessary grid and supply side investment measures to achieve the target system.
The objective function minimizes the overall energy system costs, including capital (CAPEX) and operational (OPEX) expenditure, to achieve a specific environmental target. Central and Decentral perspectives are used to solve the problem in two tests cases. The first one considers Germany’s entire energy national system targeting 2040+ scenarios. The second one, at regional level, analyses OEDAS distribution grid in the province of Belicik (Turkey) in view of integration of solar PV and significant Electric Vehicles adoption growth.
The tool has been engineered to support effective replication at EU level and beyond.
Coordinator: RHEINISCH-WESTFAELISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE AACHEN
Other Partners: PLAMES website: https://plames.eu/partner-stakeholder/ and European Commission website: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/863922 .
Start date: 01/11/2019
End date: 31/10/2022
Duration: 36 months
Call title: H2020-LC-SC3-2018-2019-2020
Unipi role: Linked third party of OPTIT s.r.l.
WEBSITE: https://plames.eu/
