Markus Groissböck - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Markus Groissböck

2015 Saudi Arabia Smart Grid (SASG), 2015

Solar Photovoltaic (PV) and Wind power plants are becoming increasingly cost competitive when com... more Solar Photovoltaic (PV) and Wind power plants are becoming increasingly cost competitive when compared with conventional thermal power plants and in the not far future may set the ceiling price of electricity in many markets. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is internationally known for its hydrocarbon reserves but is less recognized for its renewable energy resources, especially wind energy. These renewable energy resources, although known as Variable Energy Resources (VERs), can be efficiently integrated into conventional power systems to provide stable and reliable electricity, whether for national power systems or for isolated Mini-grid power systems in KSA. Traditional capacity measures as Capacity Factor (CF) and Reserve Margin (RM) are not able to deal with the intermittency of Wind and PV power plants. Statistical and probabilistic measures coming from System's Adequacy methodology as Effective Load Carrying Capability (ELCC), Equivalent Firm Capacity (EFC) or Equivalent Conventional Power Plant (ECPP) are available to assess the capacity value of VERs. All of these methods are based on Generation Adequacy where VER is added to conventional power plants to fulfil the load. A case study was completed for a Mini-grid within the Saudi Electric Company's (SEC) Southern Operating Area (SOA) where the Loss of Load Probability (LOLP) for the conventional thermal power plant was estimated and the addition of VER is assessed by using ELCC. Based on the available load data and VER profiles for PV a Capacity Credit of 51.8% was estimated, declining at a rate of 2.2% per MWp of additional installed capacity. The ELCC for Wind was estimated to be 19.4%, declining at a rate of 1.4% per MW of additional installed capacity. It was also found that using VER improves the system reliability in terms of Loss of Load Expectation (LOLE). While excessive VER production does not impact LOLE it does impact the economics. A penetration of up to 25% wind or 30% PV does not result in curtailing VER production.

This deposit will contain the released framework once ready for release.

are appreciative of the Commission’s timely support for this project. We particularly thank Golam... more are appreciative of the Commission’s timely support for this project. We particularly thank Golam Kibrya and Chris Scruton for their guidance and assistance through all phases of the project.

International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management, 2021

Multi-model energy systems are gaining importance in a world where different types of energy, suc... more Multi-model energy systems are gaining importance in a world where different types of energy, such as electricity, natural gas, hydrogen, and hot water, are used to create more complex but also more economic energy systems to support deep decarbonization. While the research community is using open source for a long-time collaborative work on open-source tools is not yet the norm within the research community. To increase the open and sharing efforts between research organizations governments are driving publicly funded projects to share their outcomes. The proposed open-source framework is based on the principle of maximizing the reuse of existing data, software snippets and packages, and add individual code only as necessary. A screening of more than hundred software packages identified six suitable open-source frameworks to be partly incorporated into the new open-source framework. The best parts of each of these frameworks are combined in a way that utilizes limited human re...

This work sets out to describe the necessary physical model for creating the building model LoadC... more This work sets out to describe the necessary physical model for creating the building model LoadCalc that can be used to generate load curves for cooling, heating and electricity demand on an hourly basis if no detailed information are available. Existing software solutions are either too complex or calculate only monthly and yearly energy demands. On the basis of DIN-18599 (draft) and VDI-6020, it is possible to create a simplified building model that is sufficiently accurate to meet the requirements of DER-CAM and the EU-project EnRiMa. With reference to the aforementioned standards, some improvements in accuracy have been made in certain areas. For example, the solar air temperature and a heat transfer coefficient dependent on wind speed were added. The comfort of users in the building is taken into consideration by the operative room temperature. The load curves generated by the building model LoadCalc are used in DER-CAM to optimize the energy demand. DER-CAM’s objective is to ...

Applied Energy, 2020

Consider different renewable profile qualities. • Assess different levels of renewables power con... more Consider different renewable profile qualities. • Assess different levels of renewables power contribution. • Avoid weather bias by using multiyear data sets. • Identify reserve margin requirements towards 100% renewable power.

Renewable Energy, 2020

Renewable energy sources (RES) are becoming more and more cost-competitive globally. Generally, o... more Renewable energy sources (RES) are becoming more and more cost-competitive globally. Generally, optimization methods are used to identify the most economic setup of individual power systems. In such cases, only the final state of the power system is of interest. This study contributes to the discussion on how to reach a 100% RES driven power system by assessing the importance of RES quality in selected European countries and identifies optimal strategies based on different objective functions (e.g., lowest capex requirement, lowest or largest curtailment). In a scenario in which economics is the only driver for optimal RES expansion, the 'min. LCOE 0 path with a strong focus on Wind would be used. If residential users are targeted to contribute as much as possible the 'max. capacity' case with a Solar PV-Wind ratio of 0.65 ± 0.35 would be selected. If the overall aim is to produce maximal excess electricity to be used in other sectors the 'max. curtailment' or 'max. zero load' cases should be considered where mainly Solar PV would be the technology of choice.

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2019

Historically, energy system tools were predominantly proprietary and not shared with others. In r... more Historically, energy system tools were predominantly proprietary and not shared with others. In recent years, there has been an increase in developing open source tools by international research and development organizations. More than half of the open energy modeling (openmod) initiative listed tools are based on the freely available scripting language Python. Previous comparisons of energy and power system modeling tools focused on comparisons such as which tool category (e.g. optimization, simulation) or energy demand (e.g. electricity, cooling, and heating) can be considered. Until now, the assessment of incorporated functions such as unit commitment (UC) or optimum power flow (OPF) has been ignored. Therefore, this work assesses 31 mostly open source tools based on 81 functions for their maturity. The result shows that available open source tools such as Switch, TEMOA, OSeMOSYS, and pyPSA are mature enough based on a function comparison with commercial or proprietary tools for serious use. Nevertheless, future commercial, as well as open source energy system analysis tools, have to consider more functions such as the impact of ambient air conditions and part-load behavior to allow better assessments of including high shares or renewable energy sources and other flexibility measures in existing and new energy systems.

2015 Saudi Arabia Smart Grid (SASG), 2015

Solar Photovoltaic (PV) and Wind power plants are becoming increasingly cost competitive when com... more Solar Photovoltaic (PV) and Wind power plants are becoming increasingly cost competitive when compared with conventional thermal power plants and in the not far future may set the ceiling price of electricity in many markets. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is internationally known for its hydrocarbon reserves but is less recognized for its renewable energy resources, especially wind energy. These renewable energy resources, although known as Variable Energy Resources (VERs), can be efficiently integrated into conventional power systems to provide stable and reliable electricity, whether for national power systems or for isolated Mini-grid power systems in KSA. Traditional capacity measures as Capacity Factor (CF) and Reserve Margin (RM) are not able to deal with the intermittency of Wind and PV power plants. Statistical and probabilistic measures coming from System's Adequacy methodology as Effective Load Carrying Capability (ELCC), Equivalent Firm Capacity (EFC) or Equivalent Conventional Power Plant (ECPP) are available to assess the capacity value of VERs. All of these methods are based on Generation Adequacy where VER is added to conventional power plants to fulfil the load. A case study was completed for a Mini-grid within the Saudi Electric Company's (SEC) Southern Operating Area (SOA) where the Loss of Load Probability (LOLP) for the conventional thermal power plant was estimated and the addition of VER is assessed by using ELCC. Based on the available load data and VER profiles for PV a Capacity Credit of 51.8% was estimated, declining at a rate of 2.2% per MWp of additional installed capacity. The ELCC for Wind was estimated to be 19.4%, declining at a rate of 1.4% per MW of additional installed capacity. It was also found that using VER improves the system reliability in terms of Loss of Load Expectation (LOLE). While excessive VER production does not impact LOLE it does impact the economics. A penetration of up to 25% wind or 30% PV does not result in curtailing VER production.

On average, one-third of Europe’s use of energy is required to supply the energy demand in buildi... more On average, one-third of Europe’s use of energy is required to supply the energy demand in buildings. Annual energy demand in households and services is expected to rise from currently 32.5 PWh to 39.3 PWh in 2030 (ExxonMobil, 2010). With the adoption and implementation of directive 2010/31/EU on the energy performance of buildings, the European Union (EU) has attempted to initiate a counter-trend. The goal is to reduce conventional energy consumption by reducing energy demand itself and by increasing the use of renewable energy sources (EU, 2010b). A reduction of over 60% in households and services can be considered as realistic (EU, 2010a). This thesis sets out to describe the necessary physical model for creating the building model LoadCalc that can be used to generate load curves for cooling, heating and electricity demand on an hourly basis. Existing software solutions, such as TRNSYS and EnerCalC are either too complex or calculate only monthly and yearly energy demands. On th...

are appreciative of the Commission’s timely support for this project. We particularly thank Golam... more are appreciative of the Commission’s timely support for this project. We particularly thank Golam Kibrya and Chris Scruton for their guidance and assistance through all phases of the project.

ABSTRACT At Campus Pinkafeld the average demand for electricity in the last five years was 199 MW... more ABSTRACT At Campus Pinkafeld the average demand for electricity in the last five years was 199 MWhel. The supplier Burgenländische Elektrizitätswirtschafts-Aktiengesellschaft (BEWAG) states that it supplies only green electricity in its service area and average CO2 emissions are 0.0 kg/kWhel. The average demand for thermal heat for the district heating system operated by KELAG in recent years was 219 MWhth. The heat for the district heating network comes from a maize-fired biomass power plant. Biomass power plants are generally considered to be CO2-neutral. Analyzing the potential of reducing marginal CO2 emissions by Distributed Energy Resources (DER) is the major objective of this paper and the EU-funded project “Energy Efficiency and Risk Management in Public Buildings” (EnRiMa). The aim of EnRiMa is to develop a decision support system (DSS) to enable operators to manage energy flows in public buildings, delivering a holistic solution for meeting the energy needs in a more efficient, less costly, and less CO2 intensive manner subject to comfort tolerances and long-term risk preferences. To get first deterministic optimization results for different DER options the exiting web version of the Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model (DER-CAM) is used. The optimization runs using DER-CAM show that a switch to a natural-gas-fired CHP plant can result in financial advantages. Compared to the marginal power plant used to meet the avoidable peak power demand, a switch to local energy generation with combined heat and power (CHP) is certainly of interest. It can be assumed that BEWAG must purchase some of its peak power from other energy suppliers. Such peak power can be supplied from gas-fired plants with marginal CO2 emissions of approx. 0.44 kg/kWhel. These emissions could be reduced by local CHP systems. With the use of stochastic weather information or other stochastic parameters the investment / planning as well as operational activity will be calculated within EnRiMa and will create a stochastic optimization platform not available in DER-CAM.

Most recent improvements in battery and electric vehicle (EV) technologies, combined with some fa... more Most recent improvements in battery and electric vehicle (EV) technologies, combined with some favorable off-peak charging rates and an enormous PV potential, make California a prime market for electric vehicle as well as stationary storage adoption. However, EVs or plug-in hybrids, which can be seen as a mobile energy storage, connected to different buildings throughout the day, constitute distributed energy resources (DER) markets and can compete with stationary storage, onsite energy production (e.g. fuel cells, PV) at different building sites. Sometimes mobile storage is seen linked to renewable energy generation (e.g. PV) or as resource for the wider macro-grid by providing ancillary services for grid-stabilization. In contrast, this work takes a fundamentally different approach and considers buildings as the main hub for EVs / plug-in hybrids and considers them as additional resources for a building energy management system (EMS) to enable demand response or any other building...

arXiv: Physics and Society, 2017

Renewable energy sources (RES) are getting closer to grid parity within interconnected systems wh... more Renewable energy sources (RES) are getting closer to grid parity within interconnected systems while their use in isolated and remote areas is already cost competitive with conventional generation. In mini-grids, isolated and far from the grid, the economics of different technology options (e.g. pure solar photovoltaic (PV), wind, concentrated solar power (CSP), and open cycle gas turbine (OCGT)) with different amounts of added capacity is assessed to allow the peak demand to increase by 5 MW (or 5%) and 10 MW (or 10%). This assessment is based on keeping the system reliability (measured in loss of load expectation, LOLE) at the same level as it was before the addition of conventional and renewable generators. An effective load carrying capability (ELCC) increase by 5 MW (or 5%) can be realized by adding a 5 MW OCGT or 10 MW PV and 10 MW wind. An ELCC increase of 10 MW (or 10%) requires either 11 MW OCGT or 7.2 MW OCGT, 2.7 MW PV, and 8.1 MW wind. In both cases, the solution with RE...

Utilities Policy, 2018

Saudi Arabia experiences annual growth of 6% in its power demand. Generation expansion has been d... more Saudi Arabia experiences annual growth of 6% in its power demand. Generation expansion has been driven by low domestic retail fuel prices leading to a power generation mix based on fossil fuels only. In light of current climate change discussions, this research assesses future generation expansion under different potential fuelprice reforms by an enhanced OSeMOSYS model. Results demonstrate that domestic retail fuel price levels > 20% [ > 60%] of expected international wholesale fuel prices 1 are necessary to minimize emissions when considering emissions penalties [without pricing for emissions]. By 2030 renewables can reach 70% penetration by capacity and 30% by energy.

Applied Energy, 2016

h i g h l i g h t s The KSA's power sector expansion is modelled under different fuel price scena... more h i g h l i g h t s The KSA's power sector expansion is modelled under different fuel price scenarios. The OSeMOSYS model is enhanced by including emissions in a multi-objective setting. Seasonal swing in ambient air temperature considered on power generation output. Local and global emissions are assessed simultaneously within the QELD indicator. At 95% wEm, emission reductions of 50% can be reached independent of fuel pricing.

We address the short-term energy management of a building. To this end, we propose an optimisatio... more We address the short-term energy management of a building. To this end, we propose an optimisation model that dynamically determines the operation of the building’s existing technologies and the procurement of energy. Our model is composed of upper- and lower-level operational modules. Assuming that the occupants’ comfort preferences are expressed by a range for the temperature, the lower-level operational module returns the flow rates of air and water in the cooling and heating systems that maintain the zone temperature in the desired range. The upper-level operational module determines how the energy consumption from adjusting the zone temperature and other end-use energy requirements are satisfied so as to minimise energy costs, e.g., through on-site generation, and/or energy purchases. We assess the performance of our model in the context of two EU buildings. Our results indicate that energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and energy costs can be reduced by implementing dynamic-as o...

Applied Energy, 2014

The pressuring need to reduce the import of fossil fuels as well as the need to dramatically redu... more The pressuring need to reduce the import of fossil fuels as well as the need to dramatically reduce CO 2 emissions in Europe motivated the European Commission (EC) to implement several regulations directed to building owners. Most of these regulations focus on increasing the number of energy efficient buildings, both new and retrofitted, since retrofits play an important role in energy efficiency. Overall, this initiative results from the realization that buildings will have a significant impact in fulfilling the 20/20/20-goals of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, increasing energy efficiency by 20%, and increasing the share of renewables to 20%, all by 2020. The Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model (DER-CAM) is an optimization tool used to support DER investment decisions, typically by minimizing total annual costs or CO 2 emissions while providing energy services to a given building or microgrid site. This paper shows enhancements made to DER-CAM to consider building retrofit measures along with DER investment options. Specifically, building shell improvement options have been added to DER-CAM as alternative or complementary options to investments in other DER such as PV, solar thermal, combined heat and power, or energy storage. The extension of the mathematical formulation required 3 To be published in APPLIED ENERGY by the new features introduced in DER-CAM is presented and the resulting model is demonstrated at an Austrian Campus building by comparing DER-CAM results with and without building shell improvement options. Strategic investment results are presented and compared to the observed investment decision at the test site. Results obtained considering building shell improvement options suggest an optimal weighted average U value of about 0.53 W/(m²•K) for the test site. This result is approximately 25% higher than what is currently observed in the building, suggesting that the retrofits made in 2002 were not optimal. Furthermore, the results obtained with DER-CAM illustrate the complexity of interactions between DER and passive measure options, showcasing the need for a holistic optimization approach to effectively optimize energy costs and CO 2 emissions. The simultaneous optimization of building shell improvements and DER investments enables building owners to take one step further towards nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB) or nearly zero carbon emission buildings (nZCEB), and therefore support the 20/20/20 goals.

2015 Saudi Arabia Smart Grid (SASG), 2015

Solar Photovoltaic (PV) and Wind power plants are becoming increasingly cost competitive when com... more Solar Photovoltaic (PV) and Wind power plants are becoming increasingly cost competitive when compared with conventional thermal power plants and in the not far future may set the ceiling price of electricity in many markets. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is internationally known for its hydrocarbon reserves but is less recognized for its renewable energy resources, especially wind energy. These renewable energy resources, although known as Variable Energy Resources (VERs), can be efficiently integrated into conventional power systems to provide stable and reliable electricity, whether for national power systems or for isolated Mini-grid power systems in KSA. Traditional capacity measures as Capacity Factor (CF) and Reserve Margin (RM) are not able to deal with the intermittency of Wind and PV power plants. Statistical and probabilistic measures coming from System's Adequacy methodology as Effective Load Carrying Capability (ELCC), Equivalent Firm Capacity (EFC) or Equivalent Conventional Power Plant (ECPP) are available to assess the capacity value of VERs. All of these methods are based on Generation Adequacy where VER is added to conventional power plants to fulfil the load. A case study was completed for a Mini-grid within the Saudi Electric Company's (SEC) Southern Operating Area (SOA) where the Loss of Load Probability (LOLP) for the conventional thermal power plant was estimated and the addition of VER is assessed by using ELCC. Based on the available load data and VER profiles for PV a Capacity Credit of 51.8% was estimated, declining at a rate of 2.2% per MWp of additional installed capacity. The ELCC for Wind was estimated to be 19.4%, declining at a rate of 1.4% per MW of additional installed capacity. It was also found that using VER improves the system reliability in terms of Loss of Load Expectation (LOLE). While excessive VER production does not impact LOLE it does impact the economics. A penetration of up to 25% wind or 30% PV does not result in curtailing VER production.

This deposit will contain the released framework once ready for release.

are appreciative of the Commission’s timely support for this project. We particularly thank Golam... more are appreciative of the Commission’s timely support for this project. We particularly thank Golam Kibrya and Chris Scruton for their guidance and assistance through all phases of the project.

International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management, 2021

Multi-model energy systems are gaining importance in a world where different types of energy, suc... more Multi-model energy systems are gaining importance in a world where different types of energy, such as electricity, natural gas, hydrogen, and hot water, are used to create more complex but also more economic energy systems to support deep decarbonization. While the research community is using open source for a long-time collaborative work on open-source tools is not yet the norm within the research community. To increase the open and sharing efforts between research organizations governments are driving publicly funded projects to share their outcomes. The proposed open-source framework is based on the principle of maximizing the reuse of existing data, software snippets and packages, and add individual code only as necessary. A screening of more than hundred software packages identified six suitable open-source frameworks to be partly incorporated into the new open-source framework. The best parts of each of these frameworks are combined in a way that utilizes limited human re...

This work sets out to describe the necessary physical model for creating the building model LoadC... more This work sets out to describe the necessary physical model for creating the building model LoadCalc that can be used to generate load curves for cooling, heating and electricity demand on an hourly basis if no detailed information are available. Existing software solutions are either too complex or calculate only monthly and yearly energy demands. On the basis of DIN-18599 (draft) and VDI-6020, it is possible to create a simplified building model that is sufficiently accurate to meet the requirements of DER-CAM and the EU-project EnRiMa. With reference to the aforementioned standards, some improvements in accuracy have been made in certain areas. For example, the solar air temperature and a heat transfer coefficient dependent on wind speed were added. The comfort of users in the building is taken into consideration by the operative room temperature. The load curves generated by the building model LoadCalc are used in DER-CAM to optimize the energy demand. DER-CAM’s objective is to ...

Applied Energy, 2020

Consider different renewable profile qualities. • Assess different levels of renewables power con... more Consider different renewable profile qualities. • Assess different levels of renewables power contribution. • Avoid weather bias by using multiyear data sets. • Identify reserve margin requirements towards 100% renewable power.

Renewable Energy, 2020

Renewable energy sources (RES) are becoming more and more cost-competitive globally. Generally, o... more Renewable energy sources (RES) are becoming more and more cost-competitive globally. Generally, optimization methods are used to identify the most economic setup of individual power systems. In such cases, only the final state of the power system is of interest. This study contributes to the discussion on how to reach a 100% RES driven power system by assessing the importance of RES quality in selected European countries and identifies optimal strategies based on different objective functions (e.g., lowest capex requirement, lowest or largest curtailment). In a scenario in which economics is the only driver for optimal RES expansion, the 'min. LCOE 0 path with a strong focus on Wind would be used. If residential users are targeted to contribute as much as possible the 'max. capacity' case with a Solar PV-Wind ratio of 0.65 ± 0.35 would be selected. If the overall aim is to produce maximal excess electricity to be used in other sectors the 'max. curtailment' or 'max. zero load' cases should be considered where mainly Solar PV would be the technology of choice.

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2019

Historically, energy system tools were predominantly proprietary and not shared with others. In r... more Historically, energy system tools were predominantly proprietary and not shared with others. In recent years, there has been an increase in developing open source tools by international research and development organizations. More than half of the open energy modeling (openmod) initiative listed tools are based on the freely available scripting language Python. Previous comparisons of energy and power system modeling tools focused on comparisons such as which tool category (e.g. optimization, simulation) or energy demand (e.g. electricity, cooling, and heating) can be considered. Until now, the assessment of incorporated functions such as unit commitment (UC) or optimum power flow (OPF) has been ignored. Therefore, this work assesses 31 mostly open source tools based on 81 functions for their maturity. The result shows that available open source tools such as Switch, TEMOA, OSeMOSYS, and pyPSA are mature enough based on a function comparison with commercial or proprietary tools for serious use. Nevertheless, future commercial, as well as open source energy system analysis tools, have to consider more functions such as the impact of ambient air conditions and part-load behavior to allow better assessments of including high shares or renewable energy sources and other flexibility measures in existing and new energy systems.

2015 Saudi Arabia Smart Grid (SASG), 2015

Solar Photovoltaic (PV) and Wind power plants are becoming increasingly cost competitive when com... more Solar Photovoltaic (PV) and Wind power plants are becoming increasingly cost competitive when compared with conventional thermal power plants and in the not far future may set the ceiling price of electricity in many markets. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is internationally known for its hydrocarbon reserves but is less recognized for its renewable energy resources, especially wind energy. These renewable energy resources, although known as Variable Energy Resources (VERs), can be efficiently integrated into conventional power systems to provide stable and reliable electricity, whether for national power systems or for isolated Mini-grid power systems in KSA. Traditional capacity measures as Capacity Factor (CF) and Reserve Margin (RM) are not able to deal with the intermittency of Wind and PV power plants. Statistical and probabilistic measures coming from System's Adequacy methodology as Effective Load Carrying Capability (ELCC), Equivalent Firm Capacity (EFC) or Equivalent Conventional Power Plant (ECPP) are available to assess the capacity value of VERs. All of these methods are based on Generation Adequacy where VER is added to conventional power plants to fulfil the load. A case study was completed for a Mini-grid within the Saudi Electric Company's (SEC) Southern Operating Area (SOA) where the Loss of Load Probability (LOLP) for the conventional thermal power plant was estimated and the addition of VER is assessed by using ELCC. Based on the available load data and VER profiles for PV a Capacity Credit of 51.8% was estimated, declining at a rate of 2.2% per MWp of additional installed capacity. The ELCC for Wind was estimated to be 19.4%, declining at a rate of 1.4% per MW of additional installed capacity. It was also found that using VER improves the system reliability in terms of Loss of Load Expectation (LOLE). While excessive VER production does not impact LOLE it does impact the economics. A penetration of up to 25% wind or 30% PV does not result in curtailing VER production.

On average, one-third of Europe’s use of energy is required to supply the energy demand in buildi... more On average, one-third of Europe’s use of energy is required to supply the energy demand in buildings. Annual energy demand in households and services is expected to rise from currently 32.5 PWh to 39.3 PWh in 2030 (ExxonMobil, 2010). With the adoption and implementation of directive 2010/31/EU on the energy performance of buildings, the European Union (EU) has attempted to initiate a counter-trend. The goal is to reduce conventional energy consumption by reducing energy demand itself and by increasing the use of renewable energy sources (EU, 2010b). A reduction of over 60% in households and services can be considered as realistic (EU, 2010a). This thesis sets out to describe the necessary physical model for creating the building model LoadCalc that can be used to generate load curves for cooling, heating and electricity demand on an hourly basis. Existing software solutions, such as TRNSYS and EnerCalC are either too complex or calculate only monthly and yearly energy demands. On th...

are appreciative of the Commission’s timely support for this project. We particularly thank Golam... more are appreciative of the Commission’s timely support for this project. We particularly thank Golam Kibrya and Chris Scruton for their guidance and assistance through all phases of the project.

ABSTRACT At Campus Pinkafeld the average demand for electricity in the last five years was 199 MW... more ABSTRACT At Campus Pinkafeld the average demand for electricity in the last five years was 199 MWhel. The supplier Burgenländische Elektrizitätswirtschafts-Aktiengesellschaft (BEWAG) states that it supplies only green electricity in its service area and average CO2 emissions are 0.0 kg/kWhel. The average demand for thermal heat for the district heating system operated by KELAG in recent years was 219 MWhth. The heat for the district heating network comes from a maize-fired biomass power plant. Biomass power plants are generally considered to be CO2-neutral. Analyzing the potential of reducing marginal CO2 emissions by Distributed Energy Resources (DER) is the major objective of this paper and the EU-funded project “Energy Efficiency and Risk Management in Public Buildings” (EnRiMa). The aim of EnRiMa is to develop a decision support system (DSS) to enable operators to manage energy flows in public buildings, delivering a holistic solution for meeting the energy needs in a more efficient, less costly, and less CO2 intensive manner subject to comfort tolerances and long-term risk preferences. To get first deterministic optimization results for different DER options the exiting web version of the Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model (DER-CAM) is used. The optimization runs using DER-CAM show that a switch to a natural-gas-fired CHP plant can result in financial advantages. Compared to the marginal power plant used to meet the avoidable peak power demand, a switch to local energy generation with combined heat and power (CHP) is certainly of interest. It can be assumed that BEWAG must purchase some of its peak power from other energy suppliers. Such peak power can be supplied from gas-fired plants with marginal CO2 emissions of approx. 0.44 kg/kWhel. These emissions could be reduced by local CHP systems. With the use of stochastic weather information or other stochastic parameters the investment / planning as well as operational activity will be calculated within EnRiMa and will create a stochastic optimization platform not available in DER-CAM.

Most recent improvements in battery and electric vehicle (EV) technologies, combined with some fa... more Most recent improvements in battery and electric vehicle (EV) technologies, combined with some favorable off-peak charging rates and an enormous PV potential, make California a prime market for electric vehicle as well as stationary storage adoption. However, EVs or plug-in hybrids, which can be seen as a mobile energy storage, connected to different buildings throughout the day, constitute distributed energy resources (DER) markets and can compete with stationary storage, onsite energy production (e.g. fuel cells, PV) at different building sites. Sometimes mobile storage is seen linked to renewable energy generation (e.g. PV) or as resource for the wider macro-grid by providing ancillary services for grid-stabilization. In contrast, this work takes a fundamentally different approach and considers buildings as the main hub for EVs / plug-in hybrids and considers them as additional resources for a building energy management system (EMS) to enable demand response or any other building...

arXiv: Physics and Society, 2017

Renewable energy sources (RES) are getting closer to grid parity within interconnected systems wh... more Renewable energy sources (RES) are getting closer to grid parity within interconnected systems while their use in isolated and remote areas is already cost competitive with conventional generation. In mini-grids, isolated and far from the grid, the economics of different technology options (e.g. pure solar photovoltaic (PV), wind, concentrated solar power (CSP), and open cycle gas turbine (OCGT)) with different amounts of added capacity is assessed to allow the peak demand to increase by 5 MW (or 5%) and 10 MW (or 10%). This assessment is based on keeping the system reliability (measured in loss of load expectation, LOLE) at the same level as it was before the addition of conventional and renewable generators. An effective load carrying capability (ELCC) increase by 5 MW (or 5%) can be realized by adding a 5 MW OCGT or 10 MW PV and 10 MW wind. An ELCC increase of 10 MW (or 10%) requires either 11 MW OCGT or 7.2 MW OCGT, 2.7 MW PV, and 8.1 MW wind. In both cases, the solution with RE...

Utilities Policy, 2018

Saudi Arabia experiences annual growth of 6% in its power demand. Generation expansion has been d... more Saudi Arabia experiences annual growth of 6% in its power demand. Generation expansion has been driven by low domestic retail fuel prices leading to a power generation mix based on fossil fuels only. In light of current climate change discussions, this research assesses future generation expansion under different potential fuelprice reforms by an enhanced OSeMOSYS model. Results demonstrate that domestic retail fuel price levels > 20% [ > 60%] of expected international wholesale fuel prices 1 are necessary to minimize emissions when considering emissions penalties [without pricing for emissions]. By 2030 renewables can reach 70% penetration by capacity and 30% by energy.

Applied Energy, 2016

h i g h l i g h t s The KSA's power sector expansion is modelled under different fuel price scena... more h i g h l i g h t s The KSA's power sector expansion is modelled under different fuel price scenarios. The OSeMOSYS model is enhanced by including emissions in a multi-objective setting. Seasonal swing in ambient air temperature considered on power generation output. Local and global emissions are assessed simultaneously within the QELD indicator. At 95% wEm, emission reductions of 50% can be reached independent of fuel pricing.

We address the short-term energy management of a building. To this end, we propose an optimisatio... more We address the short-term energy management of a building. To this end, we propose an optimisation model that dynamically determines the operation of the building’s existing technologies and the procurement of energy. Our model is composed of upper- and lower-level operational modules. Assuming that the occupants’ comfort preferences are expressed by a range for the temperature, the lower-level operational module returns the flow rates of air and water in the cooling and heating systems that maintain the zone temperature in the desired range. The upper-level operational module determines how the energy consumption from adjusting the zone temperature and other end-use energy requirements are satisfied so as to minimise energy costs, e.g., through on-site generation, and/or energy purchases. We assess the performance of our model in the context of two EU buildings. Our results indicate that energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and energy costs can be reduced by implementing dynamic-as o...

Applied Energy, 2014

The pressuring need to reduce the import of fossil fuels as well as the need to dramatically redu... more The pressuring need to reduce the import of fossil fuels as well as the need to dramatically reduce CO 2 emissions in Europe motivated the European Commission (EC) to implement several regulations directed to building owners. Most of these regulations focus on increasing the number of energy efficient buildings, both new and retrofitted, since retrofits play an important role in energy efficiency. Overall, this initiative results from the realization that buildings will have a significant impact in fulfilling the 20/20/20-goals of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, increasing energy efficiency by 20%, and increasing the share of renewables to 20%, all by 2020. The Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model (DER-CAM) is an optimization tool used to support DER investment decisions, typically by minimizing total annual costs or CO 2 emissions while providing energy services to a given building or microgrid site. This paper shows enhancements made to DER-CAM to consider building retrofit measures along with DER investment options. Specifically, building shell improvement options have been added to DER-CAM as alternative or complementary options to investments in other DER such as PV, solar thermal, combined heat and power, or energy storage. The extension of the mathematical formulation required 3 To be published in APPLIED ENERGY by the new features introduced in DER-CAM is presented and the resulting model is demonstrated at an Austrian Campus building by comparing DER-CAM results with and without building shell improvement options. Strategic investment results are presented and compared to the observed investment decision at the test site. Results obtained considering building shell improvement options suggest an optimal weighted average U value of about 0.53 W/(m²•K) for the test site. This result is approximately 25% higher than what is currently observed in the building, suggesting that the retrofits made in 2002 were not optimal. Furthermore, the results obtained with DER-CAM illustrate the complexity of interactions between DER and passive measure options, showcasing the need for a holistic optimization approach to effectively optimize energy costs and CO 2 emissions. The simultaneous optimization of building shell improvements and DER investments enables building owners to take one step further towards nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB) or nearly zero carbon emission buildings (nZCEB), and therefore support the 20/20/20 goals.