Energy System Analysis (ESA)

Research field: Energy
Helmholtz Program (PoF IV): Energy System Design (ESD)
Topic 2: Digitalization and System Technology
Subtopic 2.2: Design, Operation and Digitalization of the Future Energy Grids

The research group ”Energy System Analysis (ESA)” takes an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the increasingly important interactions between energy systems (electrical, gas, heat) at various levels, which are necessary for decentralized and transforming global energy systems.

The research activities of the research group ESA focus on the following topics:

  • Combining and holistic consideration previously separately examined energy system in terms of modeling, simulation and analysis.
  • Increasing interoperability of heterogeneous software solutions to enable the creation of cross-energy system simulations and analysis of the cross-subsystem interactions.
  • Performing a wide variety of simulation scenarios with static and dynamic simulations through to high-resolution real-time simulations.

In this direction, we develop the software framework eASiMOV (energy System Analysis, Simulation, Modeling, Optimization and Visualization), which focuses amongst others onto the co-simulation of multi-modal energy systems on a large scale using distributed and parallel computing approaches. We concentrate on the development on software tools and models for sector coupling of large scale electrical, gas and heat grids with support of both commercial and open-source software. Current research topics include automated large scale model generation for sector coupling based on Open Data, analysis of real-time behaviour power grids using specialized realtime simulators, optimization methods for sector coupling, data analysis and visualization.

With our efforts for collaborative energy system modeling and analysis, we support parallel (computing cluster, GPU) and distributed computing approaches and provide access to the services via the ESA-SCP (Scientific Computing Platform) that offers web-based solutions for modeling, simulation, data analysis and visualization. Machine learning, image and data analysis as well as optimization methods complete our portfolio in the model generation, reduction and conversion process but also for multi-modal energy system analysis using co-simulation.

Our modular infrastructure enables us and our partners to analyze the interaction between network levels and sub-areas of energy systems in an economic, efficient and effective manner. ESA works with various KIT institutes, national and international research and industry partners to achieve research goals.