The transition to a sustainable energy system depends on the large scale deployment of renewable sources like wind, solar and hydro energy. This will pose new challenges for the power and heat systems in Europe due to fluctuations of the weather over timescales of days, months, and years. Weather patterns cause major fluctuations in Europe’s weather and consequently the potential supply of energy from renewables. The persistence of weather events can endanger the long-term system adequacy of a low-carbon energy system. Future load may not always be served. 

At present, decision-making processes are hampered by the inability of decision support models to use the available datasets, because of the quantity and size of the datasets and the computational complexity of the task. Furthermore, the sheer size of the datasets with high temporal and spatial resolutions asks for big data analytics to account for the variability in both energy and weather. As a result energy system models require significant computational improvements to become tractable. These computational improvements could come from new algorithms to solve the underlying optimization problem of the energy system model or by re-evaluating which characteristics of the power system are essential.

To address these shortcomings, this unique project brings together the scientific fields of big data analytics, advanced optimization algorithms, climate simulations, and energy system modelling. The modelling framework will produce detailed insights into the influence of renewables, storage, and demand response on the adequacy of a power system. Moreover, the frequency, magnitude, duration, and geographical spread of critical weather conditions will be identified on the basis of many years’ worth of weather from climate simulations.

The core research team consists of: Rogier Wuijts MSc. Laurens Stoop MSc., dr. ir. Marjan van den Akker, dr. Ad Feelders and prof. dr. ir. Machteld van den Broek. As project advisors dr. Gerard van der Schrier, dr. Karin van der Wiel and dr. Rein Haarsma from KNMI and, Arno Haverkamp, Frank Wiersma and dr. Will Zappa from TenneT TSO b.v.. As doctoral advisors involved within the project are: prof. dr. Hans Bodlaender, prof. dr. Arno Siebes, and prof. dr. Ernst Worrell.

• dr. A.J. (Ad) Feelders
• L.P. (Laurens) Stoop MSc
• dr. ir. J.M. (Marjan) van den Akker

• Machteld van den Broek - RUG
• Gerard van der Schrier - KNMI
• Karin van der Wiel - KNMI
• Rein Haarsma - KNMI
• Arno Haverkamp - TenneT TSO B.V.
• Frank Wiersma - TenneT TSO B.V.
• Will Zappa - TenneT TSO B.V.