Time aggregation techniques applied to integrated energy systems

Simulating energy systems is vital for energy planning. The green transition continues to introduce fluctuating renewable energy sources and integration of different types of energy. Simulating energy systems is necessary to understand system behavior and the effects of investing in new technologies. In this context, an energy system simulation consists of a year in one hour resolution, i.e. of 8760 hours. Also, an energy system may consist of many geographical areas (e.g. electricity bidding zones) and energy types (e.g. electricity, district heating, gas). For this reason, simulations may become very time consuming and even intractable. The literature suggests a wide variety of aggregation techniques, which are all focused on reducing the number of time steps needed to represent a full year. The far majority of the literature, however, considers simple energy systems consisting of just a single electricity bidding zone. We have implemented selected aggregation techniques on full scale, real life energy systems with multiple
geographical areas and energy types. In this presentation, we analyze the implementations and the results. By implementing the aggregation techniques on very different types of energy systems, we aim to provide general insights on gains and drawbacks of the techniques.