Electrification of sectors is one of the mega-trends in the energy industry. Electricity demand is multiplied consequently, and needs be served by generation and grids. Projections show a fifty percent increase of direct electricity demand compared to 2019, and largely from electrification, while the total energy demand is assumed to shrink by thirty percent. These numbers refer to the current Global Ambitions scenario reported for Europe’s TYNDP 2024 (Ten-Year Network Development Plan) that informs coordinated electricity transmission grid expansion planning of Europe’s TSO. An equivalent, yet efficiency factor adjusted, shift from other energy sources is implied. So, we will focus on the electricity system only?
This transfer from diverse sectors and consolidation into electricity is often misunderstood as simplification. The all-electric society (or any step towards such) is definitely not.
With the energy transition, we are rather adding further energy options to our system, and we are increasingly combining the different behaviors of formerly mostly separated sectors into the electrical system, making it much more intermittent and complex.
Formerly quite strictly separated sector behaviors get merged. Rainy weekends, or large societal events may impact mobility demand, and thus EV charging patterns. Windy or cold weather will lead to peak electrical heating demand. Large or distributed power-to-heat applications on the other hand will to some level decouple electricity demand from weather situations. More electricity price-oriented consumption or more smart consumption (e.g., smart lighting, smart home) may prove traditional consumption schedules wrong, same as increase of prosumers. In conjunction with updated regulation, power-to-gas combined with regional transport capacity of the gas infrastructure will bring modified electricity infeed from renewables, when electricity production surpass demand. Not to forget about now boosting electricity demand of data centers, whose consumption becomes increasingly adaptive to volatile digital workload, and therewith to behavioral patterns that are not yet well explored.
Current means of planning and operating the electrical system as one vertical will not remain sufficient the more this sector integration progresses. It's our responsibility to reflect such changes in both processes and information systems used by system operators.
System operators already started addressing this challenge in dedicated system studies. Some even included sector-integration in their strategic planning processes. The cited TYNDP scenarios carefully considers demand changes in the different sectors at the European level. In 2024, the four German electricity TSOs joined forces with the national gas TSOs to acquire common demand projections from their larger grid connected parties. They modeled sector-coupled energy demand scenarios and sector interactions finally informed the current update of the (high-voltage) grid development plan on the national level. EnergiNet, the Danish TSO has already an established practice of wholistic energy demand forecasts upon which they render their future grid development plans. German TSO Amprion even invested in an innovation project to develop own software for multi-sectoral energy scenario planning with emphasis on the interaction between power and gas. And these are just few examples.
Going beyond energy scenario planning, Hawaiian Electric, and National Grid conduct studies of integrated power and gas grid reinforcement and expansion using impressive models provided by young and highly innovative software company. Novelty of this approach is simultaneous optimization of interconnected infrastructures without freezing the parameters of the one or the other infrastructure as input to optimization of the other. Such simultaneous simulation and optimization allow to better approximate the most efficient overall infrastructure compared to currently dominating sector-siloed, one-way, iterative planning approaches. Of course, this requires either the system operator be owner of both infrastructures, or strong and fair cooperation between the affected electricity and the gas system operators.
We know from consulting many other TSOs & DSOs that the challenge of sector-integrated planning is increasingly recognized and addressed, yet with different budget, urgency and intense of directed actions. And, surely, current rather still explorative approaches need to be further developed to become a well-founded part of regularly performed planning procedures.
However, advancing from system planning into system operation is also needed.
Next to now well-established forecasting of weather and its impact on electricity generation from renewable energy sources, system operators may consider integrating other sectors’ system behaviors in their control centers as well. They should define strategy and explore both methods and tooling to raise awareness of behaviors of the interconnected systems to increase quality and precision of prediction and management of events and processes in their own infrastructure. Affected process domains include:
- Operative forecast
- Outage planning
- Operations planning
- State estimation
- Systems monitoring
- Alarming procedures
- Rolling system stability analysis
- Post-hoc event assessments
- Among other control center functions
The means to do so can be dedicated sector models and multi-physics calculation or indicator-based (black box) models using, e.g., advanced analytics, AI and GenAI to provide quality approximations of effects of behaviors in adjacent sectors on your own system without sufficiently knowing the details of the other sectors.
Considering the need for incremental implementation of such new capabilities, the preoccupation of the system operators’ staff in day-to-day operation, and the quite early stage on the learning curve for such major innovation, it is the right time to tackle this challenge. Start your sector-integration activity for your control center – now.
