The overall aim is to develop and use a two-dimensional interconnectivity modelling approach to design robust and cost-effective investment strategies towards a sustainable energy system. The overall aim is to better understand the next feasible investments to move towards a low-carbon sustainable energy future.

There are three main objectives to achieve in this PhD project. The first objective is to establish the energy system simulation environment for future analyses. The second is to establish empirical scenarios for the year 2050 in which different technologies will be tested. The last objective is to generate robust investment strategies for the Danish energy transition.

Denmark is currently on the verge of a transition to a fundamentally different energy system where the share of renewable weather-driven power generation exceeds that of conventional sources. Many rich and developing countries around the world share similar ambitions as renewable energy is the key for solving the global issues of climate change and energy. To achieve a possible solution, a high share of renewable energy sources needs to be taken into consideration and a highly renewable energy system that is robust against climate change needs to be designed.

Typically, existing studies rely on historical weather and energy data from publicly available sources to investigate properties of renewable energy systems - many decades into the future. In this project, newly available climate change projection data from the EURO-CORDEX project will be combined with the existing reanalysis data in the Global Renewable Energy Atlas (REatlas) to produce realistic high-resolution time series of wind and solar power production for all European countries. These will then be used in the weather-driven modelling approach, pioneered at Aarhus University, to analyse the impact of climate change on current and future renewable energy systems. The first study will take offset in the master thesis by Smail Kozarcanin.

Renewable energy, especially wind power, has been developing rapidly in China due to a series of incentive policies. Now it is the world’s largest producer of wind and solar energy, but the sector has long been criticised for problems connecting to the grid or having its output used fully.

The reason behind this is a combination of system failures, low demand and technical bottlenecks. Older issues are systemic – planning for generation and transmission are not coordinated; the grid fails to keep up with the rising capacity of renewable power, etc. Moreover, wind power is intermittent and to ensure a robust power system, it needs to be complemented with other sources of electricity to sustain a stable supply. 

To achieve this, we will investigate the ability of the existing Chinese energy system to integrate fluctuating wind power and explore how the power system can prepare itself for integrating more fluctuating renewable energy in the future.

Fluctuating and decentralised renewable electricity sources represent a challenge for a reliable supply of energy in the current as well as future energy system. Flow tracing techniques, which assign the power flow on a transmission line to the source of its generation and consumption, represent a valuable tool set to analyse and design the future electricity system in terms of grid usage and cost allocation.

We will first use methods from Theoretical Physics to analyse power flow tracing in complex renewable energy networks to obtain a deeper understanding of flow processes in networks in general. These studies prepare the ground for the application of flow tracing measures to weather and load data based models of a future European energy system.

Finally, we will evaluate the incentives and fundamental mechanisms resulting from an implementation of flow tracing based measures into the design of electricity markets, using general economic and game theoretical methods.

The district heating sector is a major player in today's energy system, especially in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. There is a potential in terms of economic and environmental benefits of operating district heating systems in an efficient way.

The aim of this industrial PhD project is to assess operational costs and risk of a large-scale district heating system. The technical limitations of the district heating system are taken into account through least cost dispatch modelling. Ensembles of weather forecasts and the complex coupling to the electricity market will be used to ensure cost-effective production planning. Results from the analysis will be evaluated based on the day-to-day operation of the district heating system of Aarhus.

In the later phases of the project, the model will be used to explore potential economical and technical benefits of a number of new district heating technologies. These include: low temperature district heating, distributed or central heat storage, low heat consumption housing, solar thermal, power-to-heat and integration of waste heat.

The district heating sector is a major player in today's energy system, especially in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. There is a potential in terms of economic and environmental benefits of operating district heating systems in an efficient way.

The aim of this industrial PhD project is to assess operational costs and risk of a large-scale district heating system. The technical limitations of the district heating system are taken into account through least cost dispatch modelling. Ensembles of weather forecasts and the complex coupling to the electricity market will be used to ensure cost-effective production planning. Results from the analysis will be evaluated based on the day-to-day operation of the district heating system of Aarhus.

In the later phases of the project, the model will be used to explore potential economical and technical benefits of a number of new district heating technologies. These include: low temperature district heating, distributed or central heat storage, low heat consumption housing, solar thermal, power-to-heat and integration of waste heat.

AffaldVarme Aarhus (AVA) is one of the largest district heating companies in Denmark. About 95 percent of the 325.000 inhabitants in Aarhus municipality receive heat from AVA, including a large number of private companies and large industries. In total 53.000 consumers are installed on a network of around 2.000 km of pipes.

In this project, large-scale demonstrations from the smart city project READY are used to identify business models that will give a positive case for all stakeholders and allow unsubsidised replication. Experience show that these must be found at the interface between engineering, economics and anthropology, as non-economical incentives can play an important role.

As an example, areas in Aarhus where low temperature district heating is most easily adapted will be identified based on both technical and social indicators. In these areas, some costumers will need to reduce their heat consumption by investing in building retrofit solutions. This gives rise to  some different options: Either a positive business case directly via savings on the energy bill or other positive incentives such as improved indoor climate, more attractive architectural appearance, or other soft forms of motivation are needed.