OPTRES100 Project

The Paris Climate Protection Agreement requires global temperature rise to be limited to 2°C, preferably 1.5°C, implying a world-wide transition of the energy system towards low-carbon energy supply and use. Countries like China and Germany have undertaken substantial steps to decarbonize their economies.

Germany for example has reached a renewable (RES) share of over 30% in the power mix, up from just 5% around 15 years ago. China has also reached around 25% RES share but fluctuating renewable energy sources such as wind power and photovoltaics are still only 5%, growing rapidly, however.

China, due to a somewhat less reliable electricity grid at regional levels and a less favourable interconnector situation in contrast to Germany, is facing already now considerably amounts of curtailed renewables, making grid expansion and the introduction of demand response (DR) and energy efficiency (EE) options an important subject.

By the middle of this century, RES will possibly reach shares approaching 100% of electricity generation. This will pose essential challenges for the integration of RES into the physical electricity system and power markets.

In that context it is important to develop highly sophisticated analytical tools and provide detailed (time and space-resolved) analysis of the electricity sector (and on sector coupling with the heat and transport sectors) to the policy level to understand in depth the challenges and to provide an analytical basis for solutions.