The Decision Support Systems Laboratory is one of the key partners within the EnerShare Horizon Europe Project leading the implementation of multiple crucial parts of the technical solution under development, alongside the pilot coordination within the project. In this direction, our laboratory is collaborating with DEPA COMMERIAL S.A for the development of an advanced Digital Twin application, namely TwinP2G, that aims to couple the electrical power and natural gas sector by enabling multi-resolution simulations and optimization relating to the integration of Power-to-Gas (P2G) plants and regenerative hydrogen fuel cells (RHFC) in the power grid. The suggested solution is intended for application initially in the Greek energy system enabling data- and simulation-driven P2G and fuel cells optimal planning and techno-economic analyses.
Regarding P2G, it is an emerging technology that aims to contribute towards addressing the climate change and environmental degradation. It uses excess electricity from renewables to produce hydrogen via water electrolysis. This “green” hydrogen can be used directly as a final energy carrier for electricity, mobility (fuel cells powering electric vehicles) and heat, converted to methane, liquid fuels, or chemicals or even stored in fuel cells to be later reconverted into electricity. Thus, P2G is expected to satisfy the need for long-term energy storage by converting it to other easily storable energy carriers, and at the same time to reduce the load of the electricity grid by their controlled operation.
The envisaged technical solution of TwinP2G is illustrated in the figure below. It consists of various cutting-edge software technologies and data sources while it is envisaged for two main types of users: the data scientist (high programming skills) and the energy engineer (no programming skills, high awareness of energy concepts). Some indicative subcomponents of the proposed technical solution include:
- Public Data Ingestion: This module takes care of integrating data from multiple (mostly) public sources, such as DESFA or IPTO, within the solution’s data warehouse.
- Simulation and Optimization Platform: This is the core component of the solution being responsible for the design of the digital twin along with numerical and data driven grid simulations.
- Forecasting Platform: This is the component that generates multi-horizon forecasts on the acquired open data.
- Application User Interface and Security Framework: This is the main interface of both users with the end-user also taking care of cybersecurity of the application through efficient identity / access management.
