Sector coupling in the German power grid: The final workshop of the eGon project

June 06, 2023 | Last Friday, a team from our research department Transformation of Energy Systems presented their eGon project. In the project, the researchers are investigating the effects of sector coupling on the German power grid.

The transformation of the energy supply towards a supply with renewable energies poses challenges for the power grids. There is potential for meeting these challenges both through network planning that takes all voltage levels into account and through a joint consideration of the energy sectors of electricity, heat, mobility and gas. As part of the eGon project, the team is investigating these effects on the network. They came up with the following results:

• Integrated grid planning and the use of flexibilities across all voltage levels and sectors are essential for a cost-effective and efficient energy system.
• How necessary flexibility options and grid expansion are depends heavily on the position in the grid. The need is particularly pronounced in urban centers and north-south axes.
• Sector-coupled systems harbor flexibility potential, of which heat storage, e-mobility and overhead line monitoring are used most frequently in optimized applications.

Together with the project partners, the team presented the research results on Friday, June 2nd at the state representation of Schleswig-Holstein in Berlin. Later, the participants were able to attend workshops on the topics of data models, transmission grid planning, complexity explosion and reduction, and distribution grid planning.

Robert Habeck, Federal Minister of Economics and Climate Protection personally gave a welcoming address on the day. In it he emphasized the relevance of the project results and the available data for the current energy policy debate. The new data basis is important for the topic of security of supply, it could also help to explain and illustrate the necessary transformation and energy system research must also be further promoted.

More information about the project is available here and here.