IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2017 - 92

in my view

Mattias Andersson

flexibility
it's more than an engineering challenge

FLExIBILITy IS kEy FOr A SyStem under strain. When the city metro
breaks down, you require other means
of transportation. Before a big conference, you might need staff to work outside regular office hours. And when
the production of electricity is dependent on how the wind blows or the
sun shines, something or someone has
to adapt.
One of the best ways to increase
your flexibility is to use the entire portfolio of available resources. The metro
is down? Walk; take the bus, the train,
your bike, or your car. Short on staff for
next week's conference? Ask Hr, communication, planning, or someone else
if you can use some of their people;
you'll pay it back later. Are we getting
too much electricity from wind? Use it
for heating or get people to turn on appliances or change to electric cars.
Flexibility is largely about systems,
so it's no surprise that, in recent years,
there's been increasing interest in applying systems thinking to energy research. As a policy adviser, I've been
involved first hand in the transition
toward a renewable-based energy system with its large share of intermittent
energy sources, such as wind and solar.
The articles in this issue of IEEE
Power & Energy Magazine cover different aspects of the energy system,
including heating, gas, and electricity,
all the way to the consumer and public
acceptance.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2016.2637118
Date of publication: 2 February 2017

ieee power & energy magazine

The problem with the system and its
parts is always to ensure that the sum is
greater than the parts, not vice versa. As
D'haeseleer and colleagues note in their
article in this issue "Flexibility Challenges for Energy Markets," by "ignoring systems interactions, a variety of
some well-meant (local) simple targets
counteract and even oppose each other
so that some individual targets may perhaps be reached, while the overall strategic objective is compromised."
In a slogan format, you could say
that the challenge is to avoid a system
where you have optimal subsystems but
a suboptimal system. The challenge is
partly an engineering one and partly a
political and social one. And although
that isn't how it is usually discussed
and presented (including in the articles
in this issue of the magazine), one
could even (provocatively) argue that
the engineers' contribution to enabling
the transition to a sustainable energy
system and society is rather peripheral
compared to the Herculean political
and social efforts needed to enable the
system and its inhabitants to change.
you think power to gas is a challenge?
Try getting a globally binding agreement on CO2 emission reduction.
A real challenge in increasing the
flexibility of the energy system is to
establish a collaboration between the engineers and others involved in the "hard"
sciences with those involved in policy
studies, social science, and humanities. Policy makers, funding agencies,
and some groups in the research communities have realized this. In Europe,

several of the joint programs under the
European Energy research Alliance
have initiatives in this area, including
the Joint Programme for Energy Systems Integration.
Multidisciplinary research sounds
good in theory, but it is difficult to implement in practice. In reality, research projects tend to be divided into either technical projects with limited attention to social
acceptance and "other human factors" or
social science projects with limited attention to technical or physical limitations.
A first step to overcoming this divide would be to create a playing field
where all sciences could contribute.
Energy systems integration (ESI) could
be a new field of research that would
enable a deeper integration of the sciences, hard and soft. The white paper
on ESI from the International Institute
for Energy Systems Integration (iiesi.
org) clearly recognizes the importance
of this, even if the list of authors is primarily from the engineering and hard
science side of the aisle.
There are at least three reasons why
ESI can contribute to overcoming this
divide. First, renewable ESI has arrived during a time of transition from a
centralized to a decentralized energy
system. New stakeholders, including
private citizens, cooperatives, companies and municipalities, and regions and
states have different configurations of
ownership, especially for renewable energy resources. Thus, ESI is as much a
question of the ownership of the system
(continued on p. 90)
january/february 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2017