ESC News

Many future electricity scenarios, including those developed for the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE), use natural gas to bridge the transition to renewables. But such scenarios are inconsistent with the need to completely decarbonize energy supply. This study examines whether natural gas is indeed necessary or useful.

In 2017, the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB CFF FFS) launched the SBB Green Class project, a one-year pilot study in which 140 participants across Switzerland were offered a comprehensive Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) package, containing (among others) a general public transport pass valid in the entire country (GA) and an electric car (BMW i3).

While overhead-line electricity transmission grids are generally well established in Europe, and there is not a big incentive to install new or replace existing conductors, there is a high interest in improving reliability and maximising current flow with minimum impact on operating lifetime. This is the focus of the CONFAT project.

Hydraulic turbines are eroded by sediment-laden high-speed flow. Turbine erosion has negative effects on the cost of electricity production and on the energy efficiency. To mitigate these negative effects, the sediment load, turbine erosion and efficiency were monitored in a case study and a prediction model was calibrated.

Public policy plays an important role in incentivizing a transition of the energy sector towards technologies with low greenhouse gas emissions. However, measuring policy is not easy – especially as policy instruments interact in policy mixes. ETH Zurich’s Energy Politics Group (EPG) has developed a new method of measuring policy content and built a database to analyze the energy policy mixes of various OECD and non-OECD countries.

Melt water from glaciers makes a significant contribution to the overall discharge of Swiss rivers, especially during hot and dry summers. Consequently, the reduction of the ice volume in the Alps due to the ongoing melting of glaciers will have a strong impact on many fields including the electricity production from hydropower. For predicting the future discharge of rivers, a good knowledge of today’s ice volumes and the topography of the underlying bedrock is crucial.

Run-of-river hydropower plants can supply much needed flexibility to the power system. As wind turbines and solar panels supplant nuclear, coal, and natural gas generation, the flexibility from run-of-river hydropower can help keep the electricity grid balanced, stable, and secure.

Traditionally, most high-voltage insulation systems in electrical power transmission applications are stressed with DC or 50 Hz AC voltage. This article provides a short summary on the challenges associated with high-voltage insulation system design for applications with non-conventional waveforms occurring in medium-voltage converters or inverter-fed loads.

Choice defaults have become an increasingly popular and seemingly inexpensive public policy tool. Yet, there is scant knowledge on the distributional consequences of such nudges for different groups in society. A field study with a Swiss utility provides novel empirical findings highlighting the need for a careful evaluation of choice defaults.

The property of an AC power network to return to a stable equilibrium point and synchronism after a disturbance is known as rotor-angle stability or transient stability. Maintaining transient stability becomes increasingly challenging due to the growing share of non-synchronous converterbased generation from renewables in the power network.

Approximately one-third of the worldwide primary energy is consumed in the transport sector. In order to reduce the environmental impact of the transportation, alternative propulsion systems as for example hybrid electric vehicles are investigated. Such concepts enable amongst others to recuperate energy during braking, which reduces the total energy consumption. This project looks at an ultra-compact and highly efficient battery interface for traction applications.

What if we told you, that splitting a 5 mega-watt-hour battery energy storage system into 24 smaller blocks, each large enough to supply over 30 households for a whole day, can improve its energy efficiency by 5%? It’s true, and it’s all in the power electronics!

The team Swissloop, formed by 40 ETH students, achieved the remarkable 3rd place in 2017-finals of the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition. In order to provide a scientific foundation and further improvements of a magnetically levitated “Hyperloop” vehicle (pod), a research project has been conducted at the Power Electronic Systems Laboratory.

The Center for Security Studies (CSS) has just published a CSS Policy Analysis on the political and security effects of recent changes in the global oil market. Two trends seem to dominate the debate: The emergence of “peak demand” and an apparent investment gap in the oil sector.

A new rechargeable aluminum chloride-graphite battery was designed using processed natural graphite flakes in its cathode. The major performance metrics – energy density (up to 62 Wh kg^-1), power density (500-1000 W kg^-1), energy efficiency (90%) and long cycling life (>5000 cycles without capacity loss) – are ideal for grid-level stationary energy storage.

Unlike the EU’s 2020 energy strategy, in its 2030 energy strategy, the EU seeks to achieve a target of 45% renewable-generated electricity with no binding national targets for each member state. This leaves opens the question of what is the optimal allocation of new renewable installations across Europe?

The Research Centre for Energy Networks (ETH Zurich) in collaboration with the Research Center for Sustainable Energy and Water Supply (FoNEW, University of Basel) recently published the results of a study on the System Adequacy the Swiss electricity sector. The aim of the study was to develop a comprehensive concept for the evaluation of security of supply over all relevant time periods, which take into account the strategic decisions of federal policy.

The roll-out of Smart Meters in electric distribution grids allows grid operators to attain grid transparency, i.e. detailed visibility of the status of their grid infrastructure. Artificial neural networks are trained on Smart Meter data in order to provide highly localised yet accurate short-term predictions of both electricity consumption and photovoltaic production patterns.

Remote sensors and actuators are gaining in importance for the Internet of Things (IoT) and energy harvesting could power these systems directly at the location of consumption. In distributed systems or in harsh environments, e.g. sensors/actuators on a freight train car, this allows improving reliability and efficiency, while decreasing costs.

Climate change leads to glacier retreat in the Swiss Alps. New potential locations for HPP reservoirs become ice-free, and additional meltwater from glaciers may be available for production. Seven potential future site would have enough technical potential to achieve the interim goal of Energy Strategy 2050 concerning electricity supply.

Owners, operators and manufacturers of wind turbines (WTs) spend significant resources on discovering root causes of faults in components on WTs. The Chair of Structural Mechanics is developing a software-hardware solution for the smart monitoring of WTs, which is based on data fusion and self-training capabilities. 

Gas and electric networks are characterized by strong interdependencies, which occur at the level of gas-fired power plants and electric compressors. Due to the increasing exploitations of gas as energy resource to balance fluctuating renewables, the operations of these infrastructures are increasingly coupled. Therefore, combined gas and electric analysis becomes necessary.

Applications of Internet of Things are wide, from home automation to industrial operations. An Industrial Internet of Things solution developed by an ETH spin-off (Smart Home Technology GmbH) is aiming to connect beverage tanks to the Internet and optimize the transportation of beverage consumables.

Second generation bioethanol made from lignocellulosic biomass, like e.g. wood, offers great opportunities for a sustainable supply of liquid fuels. In collaboration with the Berner Fachhochschule the group of Prof. Rudolf von Rohr is developing a novel biorefinery concept to make biofuel production in Switzerland possible.

Distributed Battery Storage (DBS) in Low Voltage (LV) grids is an attractive solution for house owners to increase their self-consumption from photovoltaics (PV) and for Distribution System Operators (DSOs) to defer line upgrades. This project aims at finding and quantifying optimal operating and planning schemes for DBS and for different business cases.

On May 21, 2017, Swiss citizens voted for the implementation of the Energy Strategy 2050 and thus broadly approved the national focus on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and nuclear phaseout. Yet, the question remains: how exactly should the electricity generation portfolio of the future look like in the eyes of the Swiss citizens?

At Singapore-ETH Centre’s Future Cities Laboratory the Chair of Architecture and Building Systems conducts research on efficient technologies and planning concepts for emission-free buildings and cities, taking the particular spatial and climatic challenges of Singapore into account. The City Energy Analyst (CEA) is an example of a novel computational approach that empowers planners to improve the energy efficiency of their urban projects.

Electric vehicles powered by hydrogen polymer electrolyte fuel cells are one option to move towards a low emission transport sector. To decrease the cost of such devices, further research on the various fuel cell components is pursued in academia in industry.

Electricity is increasingly generated from renewable sources like solar and wind. Because these sources are not available around the clock, it is necessary to store electricity. Researchers from ETH and other institutions are exploring the storage of electricity by storing compressed air in caverns in the Swiss Alps.

The extension of pre-existing or in-service generated defects by fatigue can be avoided in high temperature power plant components by informed mechanical analysis which fully acknowledges the influences of oxidation and creep interactions.  This is the focus of the HTFCGT (Fatigue Crack Growth Threshold Stress Intensity Factors in Power Plant Materials at High Temperatures) project.

The world’s electricity systems are rapidly evolving with the deployment of weather-dependent solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind generation. Yet their variability at different scales is still poorly understood. The Renewables.ninja project is addressing this gap and making the resulting high-quality, validated PV and wind simulations freely available online.

Today, half of the global runoff is passing through reservoirs and this fraction is increasing. A new project addresses the question how hydropower schemes are changing downstream water quality.

Fossil fuel subsidies have major economic and environmental downsides. ETH Zurich’s Energy Politics Group (EPG) aims at identifying strategies that can overcome the political, economic and technological lock-in that make subsidy reform so difficult.

Europe’s energy suppliers need to expand or renew their grid to provide decentralized energy supply and to fulfill future requirements concerning grid stability. But where should future power lines be located? The current project of ETH Zurich tackles this issue by developing a 3D Decision Support System (3D DSS).

A research project focusing on sequential combustion technologies for gas turbine applications is conducted at the CAPS laboratory. These new systems will respond to the more and more pressing demand for increased fuel and operational flexibility. One of the main scientific challenges is to reliably simulate these turbulent reacting flows.

In contrast to other renewable energy resources, geothermal reservoirs are hidden at several kilometers depth beneath our feet. During the past decades, seismic exploration methods have been established as a common non-invasive tool to observe the Earth’s interior. To enable the investigation of geothermal reservoirs with seismic techniques, we have established how seismic parameters are linked with the hydraulic permeability of the rocks and the energetic state of the saturating fluids.

The goal of this work is to compare the costs and performance metrics of various reserve dimensioning methods and develop suggestions for optimal new methods that also account for integration of renewables.

The Chilled Ammonia Process (CAP) is a CO₂ capture technology that enables drastic emission reductions from power plants and from CO₂- intensive industries. The possible formation of solid NH₄HCO₃ represents an operational challenge, but also an opportunity for lowering cost and energy penalty. Our project aims at enhancing the performance of the CAP through controlled solid formation.

To realize the goals of the Swiss Energy Strategy 2050, buildings have to become more energy efficient and the share of renewable energy sources have to increase. This requires solutions to optimally transform buildings through combined retrofitting and renewable energy solutions and to make them fit for the integration into multi-energy networks.

While emissions trading systems (ETS) have become centerpieces of market-based environmental regulation in many countries, they suffer from two major issues. First, they typically cover only a subset of emissions thereby undermining static cost-effectiveness of pollution control as marginal abatement costs are not equalized across all sources.

Efficient building energy management has attracted a great interest due to significant potential energy savings. One obvious challenge is how to combine the efforts by engineers on improving the energy management system with approaches of social scientists to integrate the occupants actively in the energy management system.

Heating is the main contributor to energy consumption in households. However, many heating systems still run on fixed schedules, ignoring the fact that heating is in principle only necessary when the home is occupied. Modern sensor-based smart thermostats try to optimize this situation. But when do the expected savings justify the installation of occupancy-aware systems?

Traditional approaches to foster resource conservation include efficiency (infrastructure) upgrades, price increases, and information campaigns. In the past few years, behavioral interventions have received attention as politically feasible and cost-effective alternative solution. A field study with 2120 participants in Singapore assesses the effectiveness of real-time feedback to mitigate water scarcity.

The advent of the smart meter in electricity grids opens the door to new grid management opportunities. However, information derivable from the resultant high-resolution data raise concerns regarding consumer privacy. Using energy storage and local generation, this project aims to protect consumer privacy, while preserving the benefits of smart meters.

wastEturn aims to optimise the contribution of Swiss waste management to the “Energy Turnaround”, that is, the shift from non-renewable to renewable sources and reduction in overall energy consumption. The project looks beyond direct energy contribution by also analysing indirect savings, while considering environmental performance, financial viability, and political feasibility.

“Low Energy Concrete”, a project supported by SNF, has been set-up to look into the improvement potential of building materials by developing low-energy construction products. A new generation of Portland cement with clinker substitution up to 65% has been defined, able to decrease up to 60% the energy needed for manufacturing.

The TeKaF project (German acronym for temperature dependent capacity utilization for overhead-lines) aims to increase reliability, safety, and capacity of the Swiss electric transmission grid. As the electrical power transfer is increasing, a dynamic evaluation of the maximum transmission capacity of the existing overhead-lines is desired. The maximum current and thus the resulting conductor temperature is influenced by local weather conditions.

Energy efficiency is one of the pillars of the ’Energy Strategy 2050’ and therefore an important issue next to new renewables. However, how efficient are we already now? At the Centre for Energy Policy and Economics (CEPE) we try to answer this question at least for households. 

The objective of this project is to develop an integrated modelling platform for assessing energy systems that cuts across the boundaries of established fields of knowledge by combining existing and new models. The Nexus project aims to study complex and interdisciplinary questions about the impact of technical, socio-economic and political decisions on the performance of the future energy system

The ISCHESS project studies the optimal transformation of the Swiss energy supply towards a more sustainable system through the integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES). The first project phase evaluates the impact of RES at the Swiss distribution grid level. The second project phase extends the study to the national scale of the Swiss transmission grid.

Storing electrical energy in private households becomes increasingly popular. If many households still demand electricity from the grid, there is a destabilizing effect due to variable quantities of privately produced electricity. On the other hand, private production unburdens the grid. Is private households’ energy storage hence a curse or a blessing?

This project focuses on fundamental, cross-cutting issues that will provide a better understanding of Smart Grid ecosystems among stakeholders. It seeks to establish interfaces with existing networks/initiatives, establishing synergies and avoiding duplication of ongoing activities.

Speicherung hat schon immer eine wichtige Rolle im Energieversorgungssystem gespielt. Während die Speicherung fossiler Energien (beispielsweise Öl, Kohle und bis zu einem gewissen Grad Erdgas) einigermassen einfach bewerkstelligt werden kann, so ist die direkte Speicherung von Elektrizität nicht möglich.  

Low oil prices, changes in natural gas market structures and a whole set of new suppliers: Global energy markets have seen massive changes over the last five years. This also changes the geopolitical constellation of supplier and consumer countries – new security challenges are emerging.

With the target to reduce CO₂ emissions, conventional large scale power plants will be gradually replaced by distributed renewables. The increasing integration of these renewables entails power quality problems such as voltage fluctuations especially in the 400V low voltage distribution grid. New concepts as the hybrid transformer enable to maintain the desired power quality even with a high share of renewable generation. 

Demand-side management will play a key role for improving reliability and efficiency in an increasingly complex grid, balancing large demands, e.g., caused by electric vehicles. We develop techniques that automatically compute optimal load profiles, taking into account network and user requirements, and most importantly varying load connectivity.

45% of electricity generated from renewables by 2030 is targeted in Europe. As wind-generated electricity will be a substantial portion of this new generation, reducing the cost of wind-generated electricity is imperative. We have developed a novel large-scale measurement system that provides for optimised micrositing of wind turbines in new wind farms.

Control reserves are power generation or consumption entities that ensure balance of supply and demand of electricity in real-time. The reserves are procured through a market mechanism in which entities provide bids on power capacities and corresponding prices. We have been developing game theory, control and optimization methods to address efficiency of these markets.

Reduction in CO₂ emission of internal combustion engines is of paramount importance. Efficient combustion requires precise liquid fuel injection control and enhanced fuel-air mixing. This implies high injection pressures which cause undesired cavitation phenomena. Simulations of cloud cavitation collapse are performed to gain detailed insights into this deleterious process.

Future applications such as high-speed trains or medium-voltage DC collecting grids for wind parks require a galvanic isolation between a medium-voltage system and a low-voltage system, yet the available space is constrained. Compared to conventional solutions employing conventional passive low-frequency transformers, solid-state transformers (SSTs) based on novel silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductors provide supreme performance in terms of efficiency and power density.

Deep Geothermal Energy is a fundamental component of the Energy Strategy 2050 of Switzerland – expected to produce at least 7% of the present demand of electricity, or 4.4 TWh in 2050. To reach this target, we need to show that deep geothermal energy can be extracted safely and at competitive costs. To demonstrate this capacity, we initiated large-scale in-situ stimulation and circulation experiments in the Grimsel Test Site.

Economic activities strongly depend on critical energy infrastructures, e.g. the electric power system. Failures in the electric infrastructure not only cause power supply disruption, but also produce losses across the dependent economic sectors. This project models cascading failures in power systems and captures their impact to society and industrial sectors.

ERC Starting Grant project WINDMIL aims to establish a smart framework for life-cycle assessment of Wind Turbines (WTs), guiding the management of these assets from cradle-to-grave. The project couples easily deployed and affordable sensor technology with state-of-the-art numerical modeling and data processing tools for diagnosing condition and predicting residual life.

Until the year 2050, the Swiss energy system is set to be restructured. The integration of electricity from photovoltaics and wind presents a major challenge to the power networks. With the Energy System Integration (ESI) Platform, an experimental platform is coming on line where promising approaches to the conversion and storage of renewable energy are brought together.

Bottom outlets are a key safety device of dams with the purpose of discharging water in a timely and quantitatively defined volume without causing damage. The high-velocity flow in bottom outlets requires sufficient aeration to avoid cavitation damage. This project aims at developing design guidelines to ensure the safe and reliable operation of bottom outlets.

In December 2015, the world’s governments have decided to limit global warming to well below 2°C relative to about 1850, and to pursue efforts towards an even lower target of 1.5°C. Climate scientists associated with the Energy Science Center are modeling both the climate impacts for such scenarios as well as the emission pathways that would be required to achieve those goals.

Defaults, nudging you into a specific behavior if no active choice is taken, are popular in various fields like for instance organ donation or healthy food displays. Several electric utilities have now started to sell green electricity via default contracts. Such defaults are intended to increase the demand for more environmentally friendly electricity.

Project CHPswarm investigated the role, Combined Heat and Power (CHP) may play in the future Swiss energy system relying on biogenic fuels from sustainable biomass. CHP refers to an energy conversion process, producing both useful heat and electricity at the same time.

Sediment bypass tunnels (SBT) are subjected to severe invert abrasion due to high flow velocities and sediment transport causing considerable maintenance expenses. This project addresses this problem by testing various invert materials, their durability and life-cycle cost under field and lab conditions and hence contributes to sustainable operation of hydraulic structures.

In order to promote the development of geothermal energy production from deep resources, cost effective solutions to increase the drilling performance have to be developed. To this end, the research group of Prof. Rudolf von Rohr investigates a novel attempt to intensify conventional drilling processes, namely spallation drilling.

The research of the Laboratory of Thermodynamics in Emerging Technolgies (LTNT) into redox flow electrochemistry for power delivery and cooling proposes a paradigm shift in the way we power and cool computer components: Liquid redox electrolytes transported through microfluidic chips provide both power and cooling via the same fluidic pathways. Based on this concept, the integration density and energy efficiency of computers can be enhanced substantially.

The impacts on ecosystem quality and human health caused by the thermoelectric power sector are numerous, bearing on local and global scales. The overarching aim of this project is to build a comprehensive georeferenced database of thermoelectric power plants and their emissions that will enable the comprehensive (bottom-up), spatially-explicit assessment of the environmental pressures due to power generation.

At Singapore-ETH Centre’s Future Cities Laboratory the Chair of Architecture and Building Systems conducts research on efficient technologies and planning concepts for emission-free buildings and cities, taking the particular spatial and climatic challenges of Singapore into account. 3for2 Beyond Efficiency is an example of a novel office building design concept.

Approximately 1.1 billion people lack access to electricity in developing countries. Innovation and related cost reductions in decentralized energy and storage technologies make off-grid electrification solutions an important approach to addressing the energy access gap. The DERISKING ELECTRICITY ACCESS project by ETH and UNDP analyses how public instruments can make such solutions attractive for private investors.

While overhead-line electricity transmission grids are generally well established in Europe, and there is not a big incentive to install new or replace existing conductors, there is an interest in improving reliability and maximising current flow with minimum impact on operating lifetime.  This is the focus of the CONFAT project.

The Advanced Power Semiconductor (APS) Laboratory at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering of the ETH Zurich is building up a strong competence in novel power semiconductor devices based on wide band-gap (WBG) materials that represent the core of today’s energy efficient power electronics.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is home to the world’s largest petroleum reserves, and also its widest desert. There are sound technical and economic reasons for that desert becoming an important source of renewable energy. The DESERTECTION project in the Climate Policy group is aimed at understanding the social, political, and environmental challenges and opportunities of this happening.

Electrical power produced by renewable energies can be chemically stored as hydrogen and other fuels via electrolysis. CO₂ and H₂O can be used in this context as feed in order to produce valuable chemical products, such as CO and hydrocarbon allowing storing excess energy by closing the CO₂ cycle.

Switzerland has decided to phase out nuclear power to reduce the residual risk of nuclear accidents. What are the risks to human health, safety, natural and built environment posed by the Swiss electricity portfolio after the nuclear phase-out? Where will these risks be located?

Energy-efficient appliances often seem to be overlooked by households although they offer net monetary savings. Increasing the energy efficiency of purchased household appliances would provide a double dividend: Financial profits for households as well as higher social welfare due to the reduction of negative externalities from the consumption of energy.

A challenging research project conducted at the CAPS laboratory aims at addressing the problem of combustion instabilities in a new type of gas turbine combustion chamber. This technology step change is based on constant pressure sequential combustion architectures. It provides higher fuel flexibility (natural gas, but also bio- and syn(thetic)- gas), higher operational flexibility, and higher efficiency compared to conventional single stage combustion chambers.  

The ultimate goal of this research is to upgrade abundant carbon dioxide and natural gas resources, connected with the largest greenhouse emissions from human activities, into valuable chemicals and fuels by means of sustainable catalytic routes.

«How can I travel more sustainably?» - The GoEco! project of SUPSI and ETH Zurich tries to answer this, a question that many of us already ask ourselves. GoEco! uses a smartphone app to automatically track and assess travel choices, utilizing gamification elements to improve mobility behavior.

The adverse impact of the near-surface zone on seismic data is one of the long-standing problems in seismic exploration of hydrocarbon and geothermal reservoirs. The research conducted in the framework of the ETH-based industry-financed CARNEVAL consortium aims at providing new solutions to improve seismic reservoir imaging in challenging environments.

The primary goal of this project is to explore promise and challenge of a new type of a high-energy-density post-Lithium-ion battery, with the potential to efficiently store and supply electricity in a renewable manner.

The project objective is to identify and evaluate the performance of alternative designs for future electricity markets, including a continuation of the current market setting, in terms of their ability to meet the challenges created by the targets set in the Energy Strategy 2050.

This project will develop and provide a comprehensive simulation approach for decentralized power production, which tackles at the same time technical, economic and social issues.

This project studies the optimal transformation of the current Swiss energy supply towards a more sustainable system through the integration of renewable energy sources (RES).  

The primary objective of this project is to prepare the ground for large-scale implementation of CO₂ capture in the European cement industry, which has committed itself to contributing to climate protection measures and therefore to curbing its CO₂ emissions.  

The ProSTEP project assesses and compares promotion- and steering-based regulatory instruments as envisaged in the context of the "Energy Strategy 2050" in terms of their socio-economic redistributive and efficiency effects.

The design and renovation of new districts calls for new methods and tools that allow more effective use of the available resources (e.g. land area, solar gains, air flows) while optimizing energy consumption and comfort.

Active building energy management is facing significant new challenges by the increased penetration of renewable sources to the grid, and the opportunity to cooperatively manage the energy demands of aggregated district buildings through an energy hub.

Kick-off for MIGRATE: International project investigates requirements for Europe's future electricity grid.

HydroEnv focuses on monitoring, modelling and optimizing environmental flow releases under future hydropower operation in Switzerland.

This research project investigates the idea of converting existing multi-circuit AC transmission towers to hybrid AC/DC systems.

Dynamic Nuclear Polarization Surface Enhanced NMR spectroscopy (DNP SENS) is developed as a powerful tool to characterize surface sites, used in energy research.

A case study on the communication of risks and benefits, taking a “sender and receiver” model as framework.