Security of supply under climate uncertainty in renewable energy systems

• Applicant: Dr.-Ing. Leonard Göke
• Subject Area: Energy Process Engineering ; Electrical Energy Systems, Power Management, Power Electronics, Electrical Machines and Drives
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 549316936

Climate change mitigation requires transforming how we supply and consume energy. This transformation is complex since fluctuating energy sources - wind and solar - must supply the power sector and electrify heating, transport, and industry. Against this background, the project explores the resilience of renewable energy systems to climate uncertainty. The focus is on strategies to balance annual fluctuations of supply and demand caused by the weather and increasingly affected by climate change. Initially, the project investigates climate risk-aware planning of renewable energy systems. Capacity expansion models are the key tools to provide scientific guidance for energy planning. A major shortcoming in current practice is that models consider a single year of historical data to represent future weather conditions and assume perfect forecasting. Since renewable supply and energy demand vary substantially across years, change with the climate, and can only be predicted in the short-term, this practice fails to consider the resulting extreme weather conditions and may thus deliver unreliable energy systems. Since standard stochastic approaches are not tractable for climate risk-aware capacity planning, the project introduces a computationally efficient method that meets two goals: First, planning must consider a comprehensive sample of climate data covering inter-annual variability and climate change's impact. Second, capacity planning must relax the assumption of perfect foresight and capture the effect of uncertainty on system operation. At the same time, planning must still include essential components of renewable energy systems such as storage and electrification. Method development aims to resolve climate uncertainty in energy systems planning. The objective is to identify weather conditions that challenge supply and evaluate security options, like hydrogen storage, hydro reservoirs, energy imports, or biofuels. Identifying critical weather conditions in advance is not promising since energy security depends on a complex interplay of demand and supply from wind, solar, and hydro over many regions and long periods. Instead, integrating a comprehensive sample of weather conditions into planning model inputs enables the planning of a climate-resilient system. Building on the results of climate risk-aware capacity planning, the project investigates further questions: The first study performs a Life cycle assessment to evaluate the trade-off between climate resilience and sustainability. A second study assesses grid stability and checks if systems robust to interannual climate uncertainty can also withstand short-term fluctuations. The project publishes all results under an open license to ensure transparency and enable others to apply results to their work. Method development and case studies build on the existing open-source tools AnyMOD.jl and SecMOD.

• DFG Programme: WBP Fellowship
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Participating Institution: Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH); Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering; Energy and Process Systems Engineering Group (EPSE)
• Host: Professor Dr.-Ing. André Bardow