Christine Schwaegerl

Requirements on electrical power infrastructure by electric vehicles

With an increasing number of electric vehicles in operation new requirements on the electrical power networks will occur. Currently these networks are designed to supply on average a typical household load of around 2 kW. If electric vehicles will be connected then this household load might, depending on simultaneity of charging process and charging power, increase to more than 10 kW causing overloading of elements such as lines. On the other hand the storage capacity of the car battery allows providing new services to the networks, like balancing power for increasing shares of stochastically variable generation by renewable energy sources.

Power system survivability increase with intelligent support tools

Since deregulation of the energy market an increased number of stakeholders with different responsibilities and increased cross-national power transfers along with high shares of dispersed and renewable generation are currently forcing European transmission and distribution systems to its limits. Increased automation creates a higher dependency on telecommunication infrastructure and enlarges the complexity of dependency structures and as a consequence the danger of cascading effects, e.g. causing area-wide blackouts. New tools or an intelligent combination of existing approaches are required to increase the survivability of critical infrastructures. This paper describes some outcomes of a European research project called IRRIIS that was dedicated to risk reduction of critical infrastructures. One promising application is the assessment and decision support tool CRIPS — realized as an expert system; it is based on network simulations realized with PSS™SINCAL, an established tool to support the analysis and planning of electrical power, gas, water or heat networks. CRIPS assesses the current situation in power supply networks analyzing the simulation results of the physical network behavior and makes corresponding decisions; a possible common use-case is outlined and benefits of this application are shown.

Impact of different balancing zones on the capacity market design in Europe towards 2050

As the concept of capacity market is currently under heavy discussion within the European context, only a few European countries have reached the implementation phase of the capacity market. Significant research efforts have been made to identify the origin, design challenges as well as the underlying framework of capacity markets. This paper evaluates the capacity market in the European context, proposes a method for quantifying the analysis, and provide a set of capacity market framework recommendations to the stakeholders, such as policy makers and market participants among others. This paper proposes four balancing variants within the EU context (EU 27 + Norway, Switzerland), a) Each country performs its own energy balancing, b) Seven balancing zones, c) Three balancing zones and d) Single balancing zone. All four variants are subject to the five generation/demand scenarios that have been developed within the IRENE-40 project, namely Conventional Power scenario - Business as usual (BAU), Carbon Capture and Storage scenario (CCS), Desertec scenario (DES), Renewable scenario (RES) and High Efficiency scenario (EFF). Following market simulations, policy recommendations are laid out for the future direction of the European capacity market design.

Increase of Power System Survivability with the Decision Support Tool CRIPS Based on Network Planning and Simulation Program PSS®SINCAL

The increased interconnection and automation of critical infrastructures enlarges the complexity of the dependency structures and --- as consequence --- the danger of cascading effects, e.g. causing area-wide blackouts in power supply networks that are currently after deregulation operated closer to their limits. New tools or an intelligent combination of existing approaches are required to increase the survivability of critical infrastructures. Within the IRRIIS project the expert system CRIPS was developed based on network simulations realised with PSS®SINCAL, an established tool to support the analysis and planning of electrical power, gas, water or heat networks. CRIPS assesses the current situation in power supply networks analysing the simulation results of the physical network behaviour and recommends corresponding decisions. This paper describes the interaction of the simulation tool PSS®SINCAL with the assessment and decision support tool CRIPS; a possible common use-case is outlined and benefits of this application are shown.

Generation System Reliability in a Market Environment

In liberalized electricity markets, one of the most important questions nowadays is to balance the contradicting requirements of reducing cost and of securing or even increasing power quality at the same time. In this context, also the effect of the reliability of the power generation system on the supply reliability delivered to the customers is of interest. While the influence of the generation system on overall supply reliability in typical western European public networks is quite small, the situation may be different for special situations such as industrial customers or regional utilities with significant own generation capacity. Apart from the technical influences on supply reliability, in the liberalized context also the economical influences are important. Typically, economical influences of outages in the generation system - but also deviations from planned schedules - can quickly reach significant levels for affected utilities or industrial customers with own power generation. The paper shortly describes basic aspects of probabilistic reliability calculation and then focuses on economical correlations. Examples demonstrate the presented aspects