eXtremOS – Value of flexibility in the context of the European energy market coupling under extreme technological, regulatory and societal developments

Widespread expansion of renewable energies in Europe bestows a central role to flexibility, which is to a large extent provided via cross-country energy exchange. In that regard, the central location of Germany in particular pronounces the importance of the developments in its neighboring countries and the analysis of their implications. A central aspect of the project “eXtremOS” thus primarily involves carrying out scenario simulations which take extreme regulatory, economic and technical developments into account. Possible extreme developments are, among others, breakthroughs in new technologies or steep price reductions of existing technologies, short-term political decisions such as carbon taxation or technology bans, and shifts in the societal tendencies such as energy consumption.

As the project outcome, “eXtremOS” aims to deliver value propositions on flexibility in the interface between supply and demand, in respect of the influence of the European energy market coupling combined with extreme technological and regulatory developments. To this end, decisive extreme developments are identified, a comprehensive database on neighboring energy systems is established, the domain of existing models are extended, and conclusions on various future visions are drawn.

Within the scope of the project, ENS employs its expertise in the field of linear optimization, and develops a flexible decomposition framework in order to achieve feasible computing times in energy system models.