SURE is a research project sponsored by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy''s "SWEET" programme (Call 1-2020) and coordinated by the Paul Scherrer Institute.
SWEET – "Swiss Energy research for the Energy Transition" – is a funding programme of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE). SWEET''s purpose is to accelerate innovations that are key to implementing Switzerland''s Energy Strategy 2050 and achieving the country''s climate goals.
A research project which builds on the expertise of ten research partners and a stakeholder forum with major representatives from the Swiss energy sector. The project SURE spans over six years until 2027 and can be characterised along the following three main lines:
Extending existing research in this field, a novel quantitative model- and data-based framework will be developed and applied based on combining holistic systemic approaches, comprehensive indicator databases, energy infrastructure and system modeling, and explicitly representing social and policy aspects.
The results from the model- and data-based framework feed into a stakeholder-informed, multi-objective decision support tool to develop strategies and policy measures to design an energy system that is more robust against disruptions and allows for rapid recovery in case a disruption takes place. Ultimately, the project will provide recommendations and guidelines to stakeholders on possible strategies towards a more sustainable and resilient energy future.
FIGURE 1. Global average power produced by renewable energy converters (CleanTechnica, 2020a).
TABLE 1. End energy use in Switzerland in case of an energy carrier, e.g., fossil fuels, hydrogen, and synthetic hydrocarbons, and in the hypothetic case of complete electrification.
FIGURE 3. (A) Monthly demand for energy in Switzerland. (B) Calculated monthly demand for electricity in Switzerland, if all energy is electric except the jet fuel.
TABLE 2. Relationship between the relevant parameters of photovoltaics (PVs), e.g., average power of 1 kW.
FIGURE 4. Monthly average solar irradiation. Dotted lines represent the annual average intensity. Ref.
FIGURE 5. Capital cost of energy storage versus the gravimetric energy density.
FIGURE 6. Efficiency loss along the conversion chain [light gray for substitution of fossil fuels through electrification (ELC), dark gray for substitution of fossil fuels by hydrogen (HYS), and black for substitution of fossil fuels by synthetic hydrocarbons (HCR)] relative to the electricity produced by photovoltaic (PV) (100%).
FIGURE 7. Necessary energy storage capacity (S) as a function of the annual PV production (PVy) in relation to the annual energy demand (Figure 3A line, Figure 3B dotted line). The curves maximum represents the seasonal storage and the minimum limit is a day/night storage of 0.25% of the annual energy demand.
FIGURE 8. Cost (OPEX incl CAPEX interest) of the individual energy systems ELC (electricity cost ≈958 CHF), HYS (hydrogen cost ≈2656 CHF) and HCR (hydrocarbon cost ≈7896 CHF). OPEX, operational cost;; CAPEX, capital cost.
FIGURE 9. Schematic energy conversion and storage system for the electricity-based system ELC including the existing production of renewable energy and the production of synthetic hydrocarbons as jet fuel (per capita).
TABLE 3. The size of the key components per capita and year of the three energy systems in Switzerland (ELC left, HYS middle and HCR right) with an average solar irradiation of 1,100 kWh·m−2·year−1 (125 W/m2).
TABLE 4. The capital expenditure (CAPEX) and the operating expenditure (OPEX) incl. the capital cost (interest) per capita of the three energy systems in “Zürich.”
FIGURE 10. Schematic energy conversion and storage system for the hydrogen based energy system HYS including the existing production of renewable energy, the electricity production to replace the electricity from nuclear power with renewable and the production of synthetic hydrocarbons as jet fuel (per capita).
FIGURE 11. Schematic energy conversion and storage system for the synthetic hydrocarbon based energy system HCR including the existing production of renewable energy and the electricity production to replace the electricity from nuclear power with renewable (per capita).
TABLE 5. Total annual energy and cost per capita per year for the three options: electricity based, hydrogen based, and synthetic fuel-based energy economy.
Keywords: renewable energy, photovoltaic, batteries, hydrogen, synthetic hydrocarbons, energy economy
Citation: Züttel A, Gallandat N, Dyson PJ, Schlapbach L, Gilgen PW and Orimo S-I (2022) Future Swiss Energy Economy: The Challenge of Storing Renewable Energy. Front. Energy Res. 9:785908. doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2021.785908
*Correspondence: Andreas Züttel, YW5kcmVhcy56dWV0dGVsQGVwZmwuY2g=
On 8 January 2021, a temporary fault affected Europe’s power grid that could have shut down the entire European network. A total blackout was only avoided thanks to the combined efforts of all the electricity grid operators and a controlled shutdown of service to consumers in France and Italy. The reason for the narrowly avoided disaster: the failure of various key components in Europe’s power grid triggered the closure of several subnetworks for about an hour.
As with similar incidents in the past, this episode demonstrated that acute power outages are possible even in highly developed countries. At the same time, the energy industry is currently in a transition phase. The Energy Strategy 2050 commits Switzerland to a gradual withdrawal from nuclear energy, coupled with improved energy efficiency and the expansion of renewables. In addition, the government has set a target of net zero emissions by 2050.
But what happens if there is another serious technical problem, or perhaps political or economic shocks? Answering this question is the task of ten institutions involved in the project “SURE” (SUstainable and Resilient Energy for Switzerland), with a budget of six million Swiss francs. It is one of four projects in the first call for the new funding programme SWEET (SWiss Energy research for the Energy Transition) backed by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy.
Over the next six years, researchers will study specific events that could affect Switzerland’s energy system in the future and find ways to make the energy supply as sustainable, adaptable and resilient as possible. “Apart from sustainability, making Switzerland’s energy supply secure and self-sufficient is the top priority,” says Tom Kober, Head of the Energy Economics Group in the Laboratory of Energy Systems Analysis at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, and coordinator of the SURE project.
Unexpected shocks – which Tom Kober refers to as “disruptive events” – can have many different causes. For example, critical energy infrastructures may not be fully available due to technical or energy policy constraints, or extreme weather events might substantially limit the country’s electricity generation capacity in the short term.
But it is not always catastrophes that limit the energy supply as examples such as hydroelectric plants, deep geothermal energy systems or large-scale solar parks have shown time and again: other factors may influence the breakthrough of individual energy technologies, such as public acceptance, overall regulatory conditions or funding arrangements. That’s why these aspects also play an important role in the resilience of the future energy system.
Against this backdrop, the SURE project has focused from the very start on close collaboration with 16 practitioners, including local authorities, energy providers and policymakers. Three case studies in Ticino, Zurich and the Basel region focus on specific aspects. In the Basel area, for example, the emphasis is on the sustainability and resilience of the power supply for local industry. The partners will organise regular workshops to coordinate the research goals and requirements of the different actors and develop strategic instruments to support decision-makers.
Future plans include an online platform to help a broad section of the public better understand the tradeoffs between the various dimensions of sustainability and resilience, and to resolve the potential conflicts between competing measures for achieving a sustainable and stable energy supply in future SURE’s goal is to support policy makers, technology developers, and businesses with recommendations and guidelines, to help them shape their respective strategies for a more sustainable and resilient energy future.
The SURE project is new territory for the research partners. Switzerland has a long tradition of computer modelling of energy scenarios. This includes projects funded under the programme for Swiss Competence Centers for Energy Research (SCCER), which concluded last year. To date, however, Switzerland has never had modelling that covers shock scenarios stretching well into the future – up to 2035 or even 2050 – combined with an analytical approach based on a broad range of indicators.
Furthermore, computer models for such diverse aspects as infrastructure, renewables, energy efficiency, sustainability, supply security and cost efficiency have never been knit tightly together with such a systematic approach. “This is definitely a first, and we want to develop our quantitative models and indicators further along these lines,” says Tom Kober. To this end, SURE is also cooperating closely with three other SWEET projects researching innovations in the field of renewables in order to support the implementation of the Energy Strategy 2050.
SWEET brings together nine leading Swiss research institutions, including ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne, plus a sole foreign partner: the consultancy E3-Modelling in Athens, which has built an international reputation for its model analysing technical and economic interlinkages at the European and global levels.
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