System Planning and Design

State of the art long-term planning methods for transmission and distribution grids do not account for the operational impact of volatile renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, nor for the control capabilities of novel smart-grid technologies. However, such operational aspects should be included in the planning assessment since their impact will foreseeably increase in future energy grids.

Moreover a sustainable, low-carbon and reliable future energy system should consider tradeoffs between environmental issues (e.g., reduction of carbon emissions, land usage for transmission lines, and water usage for hydro power), costs (investment and operational), and long-term system reliability and resiliency. Rigorous and multi objective analyses are needed to estimate these tradeoffs and identify the most cost effective, flexible, and reliable transition to the future energy grid.

Exploiting the synergies (e.g., operational, data etc.) between sectors such as electricity, gas, heating, transportation (e.g., light and heavy trucks, public transportation) and e-mobility (e.g., personal EVs) as well as the flexibility (active/reactive power ramping up and down capabilities) that can be potentially provided by distributed energy resources (e.g., generation and demand) presents new opportunities to system planning and design tasks.

Please visit the dedicated page of each project on the relevant topics above.