Efficient management of energy resources

Project facts

Project promoter:
University of Santiago de Compostela
Project Number:
ES07-0053
Target groups
Researchers or scientists
Status:
Completed
Initial project cost:
€47,850
Final project cost:
€20,321
From EEA Grants:
€ 20,321
The project is carried out in:
Spain

Description

The efficient management of the natural gas system along with its integration with the renewable energy is essential for a sustainable development. Both Spain and Norway are known for their investments in renewable energy and they have been recently increasing their dependence on natural gas: Norway as a producer and exporter and Spain as an importer. The objective of this project is to provide new tools for the efficient management of energy resources, with special focus on natural gas networks and flexibility. The main expected results will be develop optimization models that can determine how gas should be routed or what network expansions are needed in order to meet goals such as ensuring gas quality requirements, minimizing gas transportation costs and guaranteeing security of supply. The donor partner, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, is a leading center on gas networks optimization and sustainable energy which has a long expertise using algorithms to study different gas networks. The main beneficiaries of the Project will be all agents involved in the energy industry.

Summary of project results

The core of this project was to transfer knowledge and creation of synergies between the groups at NTNU, a leading center on gas networks optimization and sustainable energy, and at USC, whose researchers had been successfully developing gas networks optimization models for two years. The main goal of the project was to provide new tools for the efficient management of energy resources, with special focus on natural gas networks and flexibility. More precisely, the aim was the combination of the mathematical programming techniques already developed by the groups involved, which might lead to the development of new optimization algorithms, allowing for extra functionalities and better performance. At the moment of the closure of the project, the algorithm developed was at a very final stage of validation/implementation and it was planned to be thoroughly tested jointly with a Spanish gas company during 2016. The algorithm aims at studying planning and expansions of gas networks in the medium-long run. It takes into account the future uncertainty in demand, prices, and costs and also all the nonlinear elements of the deterministic model of the optimal operation of a gas network. The algorithm combines standard techniques for nonlinear optimization problems (such as sequential linear programming) with standard techniques for optimization under uncertainty (stochastic optimization and Lagrangian decomposition algorithms). It is also to be noted that, as a related activity, the USC has hosted two courses in stochastic optimization by well-known experts in the field since the project started. These courses were not funded by NILS programme, but they were definitely very useful to help the involved researches at USC to get a better familiarization with the mathematical aspects of stochastic optimization. The promoter expects that the collaboration with the NTNU shall not end and that in the near future partners can keep working 0n the coupling of the two algorithms, hopefully improving even further the performance of the current algorithm. The promoter also mentions that the researchers at USC are currently involved in new projects with companies in the energy industry that have as main challenges some problems that can be modelled as optimization problems under uncertainty. Therefore, they expect that the knowledge acquired and the tools developed as a result of the collaboration with NTNU will be very helpful for these new challenges.

Summary of bilateral results

This cooperation has led to a shared result that is being tested and validated. Researchers at USC plan to present the results of this collaboration in several workshops and conferences in 2016. The most important of such conferences is the XIV International conference on Stochastic Programming, which will take place in Brasil in the summer of 2016. The goal is to present both the theoretical results supporting the current implementation of the algorithm and the numerical results showing its performance. To this end, the algorithm will be thoroughly tested and validated in real instances, with this task being developed jointly with a Spanish gas company which acts as Transport System Operator in the Spanish gas network. The promoter expects that the collaboration with the NTNU shall not end and that in the near future partners can keep working 0n the coupling of the two algorithms, hopefully improving even further the performance of the current algorithm. The promoter also mentions that the researchers at USC are currently involved in new projects with companies in the energy industry that have as main challenges some problems that can be modelled as optimization problems under uncertainty. Therefore, they expect that the knowledge acquired and the tools developed as a result of the collaboration with NTNU will be very helpful for these new challenges.