Development of Innovative Technologies and Tools for Flexibility Assessment and Enhancement of Future Power Systems

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Christian Rehtanz
• Subject Area: Electrical Energy Systems, Power Management, Power Electronics, Electrical Machines and Drives
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 405813701

In electrical power systems, operational flexibility is crucial for the balancing of long- and short-term disparities between load and non-dispatchable generation. Due to the increasing share of fluctuating power generation from renewable resources, this demand for flexibility is going to drastically increase in the oncoming years. Conventionally, this flexibility gap is closed by installation of cost- and recourse-intensive technologies like fossil power plants or pump storage systems. In order to avoid these large-scale investments, other ways of using a power system’s inherent flexibility have been developed, many of them using already existing degrees of freedom of pre-existing technical units. This approach is also known as demand- or supply-side management and comprises the operation of distributed technical units in line with the requirements of the electric power system at a time and is called distributed flexibility. From a transmission system’s perspective, distributed flexibility options are usually modelled with a high degree of abstraction, neglecting potential influences on the distribution level. In contrary, flexibility in distribution grids is often modelled very detailed, but the objective of the flexibility activation lies most often in the distribution grid itself. Thus, these analyses neglect the additional demand for flexibility or technical restrictions in the overlaying system. In addition, the same flexibility can in practice either be used for one application or another individually, but not for both at the same time. velop a unified modelling approach for distributed flexibility. While recent approaches fail at common understanding of flexibility in the different layers of the power system, the applicants will develop a modelling framework that allows the detailed quantification of flexibility potentials with a distribution-oriented perspective as well as on a system-wide view. In this approach, detailed technical optimisation models for the dispatch of distributed flexibility are implemented and enhanced by means of an extensive stochastic simulation in a first step. The systematic behaviour of this model is in a second step analysed, learned and finally reproduced by methods of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The resulting multilevel model of distributed flexibility subsequently allows a much more accurate quantification of the distributed flexibility together and novel analyses of the cross-impact on distribution and transmission systems. In practice, such modelling approaches will be crucial for an efficient planning of European and Russian transmission and distribution grids. The improved quantification of distributed flexibility will allow a more secure and stable grid operation. Additionally, the multilevel consideration of distributed flexibility is important for minimising the overall grid expansion demand and efficient planning of power plant capacity and energy markets.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Russia
• Partner Organisation: Russian Science Foundation
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr.-Ing. Nikolai Voropai