Team

Final report of Virtuelles Institut Strom zu Gas und Wärme

The „Virtual Institute Power to Gas and Heat“ (Virtuelles Institut Strom zu Gas und Wärme – VI SGW) is a consortium of seven scientific and technical institutes funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and by the Cluster EnergieForschung of EnergieAgentur.NRW, which together conduct research on flexibility options for the future power-gas-heating integrated system. Alongside in-depth research on innovative technology pathways and energy system transformations, the work presented also includes the construction of a demonstration facility at the “Gas und Wärme” Institute in Essen.
The Virtual Institute submitted the results of its work in five volumes. The Management Summary provides an overview of the results of the research that was carried out in the VI SGW project between 2015 to 2017. Since the results of the cooperation are extensive, the Management Summary is designed to aid the reader in understanding the structure of the analysis and allowing topics of interest to be quickly located within the five volumes. The five volumes of the final report are “Volume I: System and Location Analyses”; “Volume II: Analyses of Technology Pathways”; “Volume III: Accompanying Experimental Research”; “Volume IV: Appendix to Volumes I-III”; “Volume V: Technology Datasheets”.
ewi ER&S is a partner and co-coordinator of the Virtual Institute SGW project, coordinating and contributing to “Volume I: System and Location Analyses” as well as contributing to “Volume II: Analyses of Technology Pathways” and “Volume V: Technology Datasheets”.
The Management Summary and all volumes of the final report can be found on the project’s website via the external link below.

Final report: The role of Power-to-gas in the context of the energy transition

The study examines, from an economical perspective, the role power-to-gas (PtG) technologies may play in interlinking various sectors (namely electricity, heat and transport). The use of PtG technologies is analyzed for a wide range of applications including chemical storage, PtG in the industrial sector, the (potential) reduction of extensions in the high-voltage grid, power to heat (PtH) in the heating sector and power-to-gas-to-liquid (PtGtL) fuels for road transport.

Disruptive Potential in the German Electricity System – an Economic Perspective on Blockchain

The hype around blockchain provided some rather discouraging scenarios for companies in the German electricity system. Our new analysis recently shows that blockchain currently has no disruptive potential for peer-to-peer power transactions. The study illustrates that while platforms (e.g., based on blockchain technology) for peer-to-peer transactions do not face organizational or regulatory barriers, levies, taxes and surcharges on final consumer power consumption burden the disruptive potential of the technology and hamper deployment. Public blockchain-based platforms will come with additional costs for underlying distributed mechanisms.