Explore the 2024 Challenges

Partners: BKW, Swissgrid

Contacts: Jan Linder (), Jill Huber (), Gudrun Hoeskuldsdottir (), Malte Rohden ()

General Description and Problem Formulation

The integration of renewable energy and increasing decentralisation necessitate greater flexibility in the energy system to keep the power transmission and distribution grids stable. Currently, the potential of decentralized and demand-side flexibility is underutilized. The challenge now is to unlock this flexibility and empower consumers to actively participate in shaping a smarter, more resilient energy system.
The problem consists of two parts:

• Part 1: Understand the different use cases of distributed flexibility (system, distribution and transmission grids, market, self-consumption) and how different technologies can serve the different use cases. Review the current regulation in Switzerland for utilising decentralized flexibility and analyse which policy addresses which use case of flexibility.
• Part 2: Select and develop 1 – 3 promising “business cases” for (different) owners of decentralized, flexible assets in Switzerland: How can they leverage their flexibility? Who can they partner with? Which purpose can and should they serve? Which policy frameworks support these business cases? Try to quantify possible revenues. The focus should be on use cases which serve DSOs/TSOs.

Research Questions

1. How does Swiss electricity regulation address the various use cases of decentralized flexibility?
2. What are the most promising business cases for owners of decentral, flexible assets, and why?
3. (Bonus) What changes to Swiss regulation could further enable or promote new business cases for distributed flexibility?

Deliverables

Participants are expected to provide both a graphical representation of their findings and a written report highlighting the most important insights.
The selected business cases should be visualized and include marginal costs, necessary market prices and other relevant key variables.

Expertise Required

Participants should be familiar with the technical challenges brought about by the energy transition through variable power production and increasing decentralized loads. They should understand the basics of power markets, including key mechanisms like balancing markets. Beyond this, a keen interest in energy policy, energy economics, and business development will be key to creating innovative solutions.
Since Swiss regulation is not available in English, at least one team member should understand German, French, or Italian.

Partner: Helion Energy AG

Contacts: Robin Bühler ()

General Description and Problem Formulation

Photovoltaic (PV) power plants are crucial for sustainable electricity production, typically operating for 20 to 30 years. However, the energy output of these plants can degrade over time due to various factors. If left undetected, these losses can accumulate over time, potentially leading to significant energy and financial losses. Helion, the leading installer of PV power plants in Switzerland, offers monitoring and maintenance services. The current methods involve straightforward yet reliable analysis along with manual and visual inspections.

The challenge is to create a solution that enhances the detection of efficiency losses in PV power plants by employing innovative data science techniques. The solution should be innovative and adaptable to various PV plants, potentially incorporating advanced data science approaches like machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). This solution could play a key role in Switzerland's energy transition by enhancing PV efficiency.

Research Questions

• How can we quantify the energy losses in PV power plants using high-resolution and multi-year monitoring data? This question aims to establish a method for accurately measuring the energy output decline in PV plants over time, using a large set of high resolution PV-data.
• Which ML/AI techniques are most effective in detecting different types of performance losses in PV power plants at the earliest possible stage? This explores the effectiveness of various approaches in early detection, which is crucial for timely interventions.
• What is the potential impact of implementing advanced monitoring and AI-driven predictive maintenance across thousands of PV plants managed by Helion? This investigates the broader implications, including the potential improvements in renewable energy efficiency and the economic benefits of widespread adoption of these technologies.

Deliverables

• Data Analysis and Visualization: Data analysis outputs, including visualizations, that present the quantified energy losses over time, as well as any identified patterns or trends.
• ML / AI Model(s): A functional model or set of models that can detect performance losses in PV plants. The model(s) should be tested, validated, and optimized for early detection.
• A set of actionable recommendations, including for example: Implementation strategy, scalability plan and impact assessment
• (optional: a software prototype tool implementing the developed ML models for PV plant monitoring)

By completing these deliverables, students will gain hands-on experience with real-world data, practical insights into AI/ML-applications in the energy sector, and the opportunity to contribute to improving the efficiency and sustainability of renewable energy systems. Additionally, their solutions have the potential to be implemented in an industrial setting, making a direct impact on the operation of thousands of PV plants managed by Helion.

Expertise Required

We are primarily seeking motivated students who are passionate about the topic and eager to contribute and learn from any background. The skills listed below are therefore helpful but not essential.

1. Technical Expertise:
   a. Data Science and ML / AI
   b. Skills in programming (preferably Python)
   c. Basic understanding of PV systems
   
   
2. Economic and Strategic Expertise

Partner: VBZ - Verkehrsbetriebe Zürich

Contacts: Fabio Inderbitzin (), Geoff Klein (), Robin Pearson ()

General Description and Problem Formulation

Electric trams, trains and busses consume a lot more energy for heating than most people expect. For Trains and Trams busses, this is mainly an issue of energy consumption, but for Battery Buses this can be critical during winter operation.

Many complex factors must be considered during the planning: climate, temperature settings, passenger comfort, heating technology, charging regime and so on. Many operators choose to include fossil fuel heaters in their battery buses. As a large city operator, VBZ has the resources and experience to do this, but smaller operators do not.

Research Questions

• How can simple, easy to use guidelines be created to help small operators make the right decision?
• What issues do they need to consider and how can they be presented in a user friendly manner?
  
  

Deliverables

Help us develop guidelines to support small bus operators making the transition from diesel to electric and show them how to take winter operation into account. This can be in the form of a document, website or whatever you tink would be most helpful.

Expertise Required

The following skills would be useful:

• electrical engineering (energy);
• city planning;
• economics.

Partners: Share.P & ewz

Contacts: Mateusz Wojdylo () Bossio Martina ()

General Description and Problem Formulation

For real estate owners, accurately calculating the true demand for EV charging stations in their buildings can be a significant challenge. Rather than installing a station at random parking spots, a tool can optimize the location and amount of shared charging stations. With this calculator real estate owners can budget and plan the EV development for the coming years. On the other hand, DSOs (distributions grid operators) are planning to use controlled charging to reduce and/or postpone grid expansion due to e-mob penetration. The result of the optimization will include the flexibility potential of the charging stations at the considered property.

Research Questions

• What is the optimal placement and amount of charging stations at a property?
• What is the power flexibility potential of the optimized charging park to be used by the DSO?

Deliverables

• Web based calculator estimating
  - the optimal placement and amount of charging stations
  - their flexibility potential
  per year for the next 5 years.
• Available data:
  - Load profile and grid connection point power of the property,
  - GIS,
  - Size of the parking,
  - EV sales predictions from AMAG or Emil Frey.

Expertise Required

• Data/computer science: coding and prompting.
• Research skills.
• Design skills, ability to make assumption.
• Basic understanding of distribution power grid of help.

And a smile :)

Partner: Axpo Grid

Contact: Fiona Turner-Hehlen ()

General Description and Problem Formulation

With the increase in PV production, the load curve in Axpo’s substations is changing. As a highvoltage distribution grid operator, Axpo only measures the “net-consumption” in every substation. On the other hand, how much decentralized PV power is produced in the supply area of a substation is not currently measured but would be important information for grid studies.

To calculate this, the team would need to access open-source data from the installed PV installation, combine it with weather data and map the production of every decentral PV power plant to the correct substation. The result of this work would be a time series of calculated fed-in power. After successful validation, this microservice will be implemented in Axpo’s Azure environment by Axpo’s IT Departement.

Research Questions

• What weather data should be used to calculate current PV power and from which data provider can these data be accessed?
• What open-source data can be accessed to calculate the installed PV power in Switzerland?
• How to implement a function that the installed PV power is mapped to Axpo’s Substation

Deliverables

A microservice running in a server environment that collects the current solar irradiation and determines the PV production for every Axpo substation.

Expertise Required

• Python, API, Micro Services
• Programming in server environment (e.g. Azure)

Partner: Empa, Urban Energy Systems Laboratory

Contact: Dr. Mashael Yazdanie, Group Leader of Macro-Energy Systems Analysis at the Urban Energy Systems Lab, Empa ()

General Description and Problem Formulation

The urgency for humanity to transition to sustainable systems that reduce environmental impacts while ensuring well-being for all is more dire now than ever before for us to mitigate the worst impacts of anthropogenically-induced climate change. Energy sufficiency (ES) is a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of this transition. ES focuses on the adoption of daily practices and policy measures that minimize the demand for energy and other resources, such as materials, land, and water, while delivering human well-being for all within the limits of planetary boundaries. Unlike energy efficiency, which focuses on doing more with less energy, sufficiency aims to fundamentally reduce the need for energy consumption in the first place.

While many countries focus on energy efficiency as a primary strategy, energy sufficiency offers a deeper, more transformative approach. However, despite its potential, it remains largely unexplored in national energy strategies. France is currently the only country to have explicitly integrated sufficiency into its national energy transition strategy, demonstrating the massive, untapped potential of ES (see Figure).

This project challenges students to explore how Switzerland could embrace energy sufficiency as a core component of its transition towards a more sustainable, resilient, and eudemonic society and energy future.

Research Questions

As a team, you will investigate the following questions:

1. What is the current state of energy sufficiency in Switzerland, and how does it integrate with the country's existing energy transition strategies?
   Explore the present understanding and application of energy sufficiency in Swiss policies and society; investigate how energy sufficiency measures are currently perceived and implemented in the context of Switzerland's energy goals.
2. What are the social, economic, and technological barriers and opportunities associated with promoting energy sufficiency in Switzerland?
   Identify the key challenges and enablers for adopting energy sufficiency practices; examine factors such as public acceptance, economic incentives, and the role of technology in facilitating or hindering ES.
3. How can energy sufficiency contribute to reducing energy demand in different sectors (e.g., residential, industrial, transportation) within Switzerland?
   Understand sector-specific potential for energy sufficiency; assess the impact of ES measures in various sectors, considering both quantitative (e.g., potential energy or resource savings) and qualitative benefits (e.g., societal well-being).
4. What actionable next steps (e.g., policy recommendations, awareness campaigns, etc.) can be made to effectively integrate ES into Switzerland's energy transition framework? Who are the stakeholders that should be involved?
   Translate findings into actionable suggestions; develop recommendations for stakeholder groups (e.g., academia, industry, government, the public); how can policymakers better incorporate ES into the national energy strategy, ensuring alignment with sustainability goals?

Deliverables

1. Comprehensive Report
   A detailed report that synthesizes the findings from your research, addressing each of the research questions (i.e., analysis of the current state of ES in Switzerland, barriers and opportunities, sector-specific case studies, potential impacts/benefits of ES, actionable recommendations, etc.).
2. Policy Brief
   A concise policy brief aimed at policymakers, summarizing the key insights and recommendations from the research. The brief should be practical, highlighting the most critical actions that could be taken to enhance energy sufficiency in Switzerland's energy transition. It should be written in clear, non-technical language to be accessible to a broad audience of decision-makers.
3. Presentation
   A presentation of the research findings and recommendations to stakeholders, including academia, industry, and the government. This presentation should effectively communicate the significance of ES and the proposed strategies for its implementation in Switzerland's energy transition efforts.

Expertise Required

A diverse team is essential for multidisciplinary insights into energy sufficiency. Students with a strong understanding of energy systems and issues, both with technical and non-technical backgrounds are an asset. This includes the fields of engineering (e.g., Master of Energy Science and Technology students), public policy, social sciences and humanities, and others with a strong focus or interest in energy.