Since our last newsletter, large progress has been made in the WHY project. With the finalisation of the Deliverable 1.3 “Use Case definition: objectives, scope, variables”, the WHY Use Cases are defined and designed with relevant stakeholders. This short article provides a sneak peek into the definition of the five Use Cases of the WHY project, that capture a wide diversity of contexts from the micro-grid to energy community, national, European, and global level.

The Use Cases play a central role in the WHY project, as through their application in diverse situations, the WHY Toolkit and models will be tested and validated. This deliverable aims to provide detailed definition for the Use Cases, that will be then operationalized and carried out in WP5 using the WHY Toolkit and Energy System Models (ESMs). In this way, the impacts of WHY modelling enhancements on energy efficiency and climate mitigation strategies at different jurisdiction levels, from the micro-grid and energy communities to the European and global levels will be tackled.

The WHY Toolkit will be able to provide information on consumption behaviour of households with a very high level of detail and considering multiple different factors, of which the consideration of decision processes for investments and every day life decisions might just be the most relevant in comparison to other household consumption models. The development of the WHY Toolkit brings together multiple different fields of expertise, each with their own existing models or modelling approaches. Thus, it requires a well-defined architecture and was the starting point for the development of the WHY-architecture.

In this short article invite you to take a sneak peek into the WHY-Architecture and how that translates to the different Use Cases and maybe kindle you interest to take a closer look at Deliverable D3.1 and the WHY-Architecture developed by 4ward Energy Research, Forschungszentrum Jülich and our project coordinator University of Deusto.

Registration open!

Join the WHY project on 31st of March from 9:00-10:00 a.m. as we collaborate with fellow H2020 project sEEnergies in their webinar series. The webinar titled “Energy Efficiency in Smart Energy Networks and Smart Grids”, will discuss smart grids from the perspective of demand-side management and linking energy efficiency measures to energy network investments. WHY’s own Dr. Noah Pflugradt will present WHY’s ongoing work on residential demand-side management.

Supporting investments in energy efficiency is considered a key strategy to achieve a successful transition to low-carbon energy systems in line with the Paris Agreement. Increased energy efficiency levels are expected to reduce the need for investments in controversial technologies, such as carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) and nuclear energy, and to induce a downward push on carbon prices, which may facilitate the political and societal acceptance of climate policies, without adversely affecting living comfort and sustainable development. In order to fully reap these potential benefits, economies need to design policy packages that balance emission reduction incentives on both the demand and the supply side. This short article presents a model-comparison exercise, using two well-established global integrated assessment models, PROMETHEUS and TIAM-ECN, to quantitatively analyze the global system-level effects of increased energy efficiency in the context of deep decarbonization scenarios.

Improving Demand-side Modelling to Inform Ambitious Climate Policies in the European Union

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related administrative burden, WHY’s intended 2021 Summer School could not take place as a traditional, physical course on the University of Deusto campus. Just like everyone else in Europe, we decided to offer an online alternative:  WHY organised an interactive, online learning-based workshop series as a supplementary addition to the annual Energy Modelling Platform for Europe (EMP-E) Conference. This “WHY Skills Workshop” idea was developed to offer hands-on skills training for aspects of energy systems models to appeal to students and current energy modellers alike.

The WHY D2.1 deliverable entitled "Dictionary of load profiles: methodology and results" resulting from the work carried out as part of Task 2.1, will finally be released for general reading soon. Here are eight good reasons why you can't miss it!

#1: Because it provides information, at a glance, on twenty load profile datasets from at least eight different countries. Indeed, a summary table has been developed that reports the number of load profiles per dataset, the type of site of the load profiles (whether households, offices, industries, or public administrations), the period of collection of the datasets, the sampling frequency, and even the estimated median length of the load profiles. Adding up the total number of load profiles collected (regardless of their initial length), the value exceeds 55,000!

Our sister project newTRENDs released the first study aimed at using load profile clustering and socio-demographic segmentation to improve energy demand modeling at EU level, in particular by better capturing energy consumption behaviors, comparing different clustering approaches, and including very recent high-frequency electricity consumption data.

This webinar built on the results of the first NUDGE activities and especially the Europe-wide online survey, made available in 15 languages and completed by persons in 29 countries which broke fresh ground in the study of energy-related behaviour by operationalizing three theoretical models of human behaviour.

After almost 3 years of great collaborations and hard work, the EERAdata project has come to an end last month. The partners presented the EERAdata Decision Support Tool, a socio-economic and LifeCycle Assessment software for energy efficiency interventions on the public building stock during their final events. If you have missed these catch up by reading the key takeaways from the conference and watch the presentation from the training.

WHY is the next step in improving energy demand modelling and predicting household energy consumption. The WHY project develops innovative methodologies and a toolkit for short- and long-term household energy consumption modelling. Use cases benchmark these models ranging from local to European sized energy grids.  To bundle findings and outcomes of projects dealing with energy efficiency and energy consumption as well as modeling energy consumptions to support policies related to energy transition we seek to publish interesting news and articles. We seek articles and news from other projects and inititiatives, as well as by researchers or policy initiatives interested in distributing their results  in an easy-to-understand language.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.