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Opportunities and constraints for load balancing by energy storage, shiftable loads and electricity-driven combined heat and power (CHP) in energy systems with high renewable energy shares

Funding Organisation: German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi)

Co-operation: Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology (UMSICHT), Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation (IOSB)

Project duration: December 2010 until June 2013

Contact: Yvonne Scholz, Hans Christian Gils

The project aims at analysing and evaluating the economic potentials of technologies and methods for power balancing, i.e. the adaptation of the power generation to the instantaneous load or the adaptation of the load to the instantaneous power generation. For this purpose the energy system model REMix is applied. It uses high spatial and temporal resolution data on load and renewable power generation potentials in order to design or validate energy mixes that can reliably cover the load at any time under consideration of power transmission to/from other European and North African countries. The model is further developed in the scope of the project:

• Improved modelling of the power and heat demand concerning long range development, sectoral resolution and spatial and temporal distribution
• Modelling of demand response potentials and costs including shiftable heat loads
• Complementing the pumped hydro, compressed air energy and hydrogen storage systems implemented in REMix with batteries and methane generation as storage options

The enhanced model will be used to determine application potentials of storage technologies under different cost regimes for storage and demand response methods.

In the framework of this project, DLR participates in the IEA ECES Annex 26 ‘Electric Energy Storage -Future Energy Storage Demand‘. It leads work package 2: ‘Calculation method to determine spatial demand for electric energy storage’.

DLR is the only contractor in this project, but it exchanges data and methods with the Fraunhofer institutes UMSICHT and IOSB, which investigate the regional load balancing demand in Germany under consideration of power grid restrictions in the BMWi-financed project ‘Model-based, regionally resolved analysis of the demand for power grid-connected energy storage for balancing renewable energy’.