Studienprojekte in Energie und Umwelt
General Information
In order to contribute as actively as possible to flattening the infection curve on the part of the chair, we are suspending classroom lectures for the time at hand. In order to avoid any disadvantage for students and to enable an optimal preparation for the exams, we will use virtual teaching methods. Please join the OPAL group to get all further information and inform yourself about the current status on the websites of the authorities and at the TU Dresden via
Stay healthy and #stayhome!
Why is everything here suddenly in English? The course is held mainly in English to facilitate and understand the implementation and application of scientific studies.
- Lecturer: Constantin Dierstein
- Contact: Constantin Dierstein
- Online Meeting: Zoom-Link
- Kick-Off: 14.04.2021 - 09:00h
- The focus of the course is the independent processing and scientific analysis of a current topic in the energy sector. The students will work as a group and produce a scientific report as a result.
The schedule of the event is planned as follows:
-
Kick-off meeting
-
Regular consultations
-
Interim presentations in the plenum on the progress of the project
-
Interim report
-
Final presentation and final report
Enroll at OPAL!
In order to participate at the Studienprojekt / Case Studies / Study Project enroll in the OPAL course.
What is the current topic?
The maximum trade volume between two areas generally depends on the trade capacities between these areas. If the volume to be traded is larger than the available exchange capacities, the trade is limited and a bottleneck occurs
In electricity trading, the trading partners are bidding zones (e.g. countries) and the exchange capacities are limited in the form of line capacities. However, not only the lines exactly between two bidding zones play a role, but also the lines within these zones. For example, the electricity generated in the middle of the bidding zone must be transported via the lines within the zone to the border and from there to its destination in the other bidding zone.
If it were not electricity but oranges, these would also have to be transported by truck over the road network. The number of trucks and the number of roads limits how many oranges can be traded. With the electricity there is now however a characteristic which is reflected in the electrotechnical laws. The electricity generated by a power plant is not transported from A to B by a truck on a road, but uses all available trucks or roads at the same time to a small extent. How much it uses them always depends on the electrical resistance. If you want to trade electricity between bidding zones, it is important not only to say "we have a 100 MW line and a 900 MW line between the two bidding zones, so we can trade 1000 MW", but to look at how the electricity actually flows and whether it does not flow to a very large extent via the 100 MW line (due to the electrotechnical laws) and does not use the 900 MW line at all. In this case, only 100 MW could be traded. This consideration is called flow-based. In other words, a flow-based view of electricity trading. Until 2015, this did not take place in Europe, but fixed trading capacities were specified. Since 2015, there is the so-called flow-based market coupling, which should take into account exactly the phenomena mentioned.
Now one could ask why this is necessary, because it worked before. On the one hand, in theory a more exact consideration of electrotechnical laws leads to the fact that I have to keep lower safety margins and can make more capacities available to the trade. More trade means more welfare. On the other hand, one is able to match the actual power flows better than with the old model. This means that it is no longer necessary to intervene retrospectively if a line is overloaded (redispatch) due to a miscalculation. This saves money. All in all, this process should also make it possible to connect as many markets as possible as safely as possible (i.e. without violating the line capacities) in order to create a European electricity market.
It is now exciting for science and practice to find out which special features Flow-Based Market Coupling entails. What effects the theoretical considerations have in reality and how these can be measured? And because it is often the case that theory and reality fall apart, you come into play. You may and should do your work on the research front in a topic that is as topical as few others and will shape electricity trading for decades to come.
For this purpose, we have set the following basic tasks:
- Prognosis of the so-called base case by means of machine learning (power plant dispatch prognosis)
- Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of FBMC vs. nodal pricing at different zone sizes
- Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of FBMC vs. ATC/NTC at different MinRAMs.