BACHER ENERGIE AG

Design and operate your own, local or regional Smart Energy System at lowest possible costs by the right medium- and long-term investments (today until 2050+).

BACHER ENERGIE AG provides expertise supported by tools to understand, design and operate Smart Energy Systems

Your future Smart Energy System is an energy system with electricity networks as backbone integrated with (in the longer-term future) CO2-neutral or CO2-free gases, heating and cooling devices and networks and their user actions. It can intelligently integrate the actions of all users connected to it - consumers, generators and those that do both (storage, prosumers) - in order to efficiently deliver sustainable, economic and secure energy supplies.
Your Energy System 2050: It will be a low-carbon, secure, reliable, resilient, accessible, cost-efficient, and market energy and renewables investment based energy system supplying the energy needs to all of society at local citizen community and - where economically beneficial - pan-European level. It paves the way for a fully carbon-neutral circular economy in your area by the year 2050.
Your Energy system transition: The path towards 2050 via the intermediate milestone year 2030 shall be adequately planned and executed by means of a sequence of targets and milestones and the progressive implementation of functionalities that will enable the transformation. These functionalities will range across the energy system value chain (from electricity generation to energy storage, distribution and end-use of electricity, heating and cooling), its stakeholders (from the energy consumer, to the market-, network and service-operators), its different energy vectors (from electricity to gas, heating and cooling, etc.) and the related non-technical issues (national and regional, local legislation, regulation, markets).

Your case: Invest in the minimum capacities and undertake minimum cost local operation for your Smart Energy System to become a prosumer or a citizen energy community, connected to the electricity grid.
Plan and make your investments in a given number of investment periods (e.g. three 10-year investment periods) until approx. 2050 where the last one assumes a CO2-neutral energy system with Hydro, PV, Wind, CO2-neutral gases and storage, feasible and payable. No nuclear power generation is modelled in this case.
Your model starts with a given hourly electricity system demand and the assumption that a large part of your electrity is bought initially on the still strongly fossil-energy based market market where price volatility can be "damped" e.g. by the local electricity utility through mandatory or voluntary non-volatile consumer grid tariffs and energy prices. This is enhanced by corresponding electricity purchase agreements or electricity market products. Currently many small communities or cities without own electricity generation prefer this. The GOAL: For each of three (e.g. 10-year-) investment periods, determine the lowest-cost additional local PV, Battery and Heating and Cooling storage capacity, determine the amount of energy to be bought from the market and taken from own, possibly remote Wind (or PV-) generation capacity (if any), determine the maximum used distribution grid capacity for bringing in the remote own generation and the bought market electricity. This is combined with the grid capacities for transporting the excess PV electricity to other consumers which is not consumed locally, i.e. not used in local batteries and not used for obtaining local heat and cold. Once these Smart Energy system design-parameters are determined, we intend to provide a rational for how to control the Battery and Heating and Cooling storage charging and discharging and how to use the PV and Wind energy.

The hourly electric and Heating and Cooling energy balance of Smart Energy Prosumers and citizens communities: Satisfy the electric and Heating and Cooling energy needs of a prosumer or of energy citizen communities at minimum yearly cost and provide the prosumer with the desired hourly electric and Heating and Cooling final use energy during all hours (for electricity) and months (for Heating and Cooling) of the year. The prosumer can invest in local PV, (remote) Wind, Battery and Heating and Cooling capacities in each of several Investment Periods (IP). With this investment per investment period, the prosumer may also own a (part of a) remote wind generator which uses the (lossless) electricity grids to transport energy to the prosumer. The prosumer also owns a local PV generator, a local lossy battery for storage and release of electricity and lossy storage for heating and cooling needs. The prosumer also buys electricity from the market via the grid such as base or peak products for a day, a week or even longer time periods. In this case, the prosumer is not interested in selling excess hourly energy to the market or to third parties. Instead, the prosumer uses non-used electric energy for heating, cooling and mobility energy needs. This case assumes that the market energy is still partially produced using fossil sources, i.e. the market-electricity still emits CO2. As a consequence, it is assumed that governments restrict more and more the use of this CO2-emitting market energy. In investment period 1, this is still fully allowed. In the last investment period no market energy (i.e. no CO2-emissions) is allowed any more. In-between the first and last Investment Period (towards 2050), the use of market energy has to decrease linearly from each investment period to the next. As a consequence, until the last investment period, prosumers must replace market energy more and more by renewable energy sources.
The consequences of PV, Wind, battery and heating and cooling storage investments and buying market energy on grid use pricing: It is assumed that the grid regulation (laws) are such that the prosumer only pays for actual grid use based on maximum used grid capacity [kW] in a calendar year. Grid capacity is used (and paid) for the consumed wind generator energy and when buying energy from the market.
This case takes - given from a previous year - the real-world hourly (gross) electricity and monthly heating and cooling demand of the prosumer, the maximum hourly (remote) Wind-based electricity generation patterns and the maximum hourly (local) sunshine-based electricity generation patterns of PV-cells. I.e. stochastic, variable behavior of hourly demand and hourly weather dependent Wind and Sunshine is considered.
The goal is to determine for each investment period the right prosumer investments into PV, Wind, battery and heating and cooling storage capacities, what are the running (operational) costs for buying energy from the market and for using the electricity grid. : How many kW of installed Wind generation power, how many kW of installed PV-generation power and how many kWh of installed battery and heating and cooling storage does the prosumer need to invest in each investment period so that the yearly investments costs - amortised over the expected use-time of the equipment - plus the costs for buying energy from the market and for using the grid are minimal at given specific costs for the Wind generator [EUR/kW installed] (see On-Shore Wind Generation Costs from [IRENA], the PV-generator [EUR/kW installed] (see PV Costs, from [IRENA]), the battery [EUR/kWh installed] (see [IRENA]), at a given tariff for taking (wind-) energy from the grid [EUR/kW peak] (see CHF/kWh-Tariffs [Elcom] Column Netznutzung CH) and for a given energy market price for buying energy from the market [EUR/kWh] (see [Elcom] Column Energie CH) or prices from the [Elcom] Spot market). Specific Heating and Cooling storage costs are assumed to be very low compared to the other investments.

The free test version assumes a given hourly electricity demand profile, a given monthly heating and cooling demand profile, given weather-dependent PV and Wind generation profiles. Prices for buying market energy are assumed to be constant per year and given.
The commercial version allows you to consider YOUR hourly electricity demand profile, YOUR monthly heating and cooling demand profile, YOUR weather-dependent PV and Wind generation profiles and your assumption about specific costs for any type of storage, PV, Wind, market energy and grid use. Also, together with BACHER ENERGIE AG, you can modify further assumptions based on your particular environment and goals.
Click Smart System Design results to see what you get, when you run such a case.

Main parameters/inputs

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BACHER ENERGIE AG provides expertise supported by tools to understand, design and operate Smart Energy Systems

Your case: Invest in the minimum capacities and undertake minimum cost local operation for your Smart Energy System to become a prosumer or a citizen energy community, connected to the electricity grid.