Abstract:

The future energy system will change significantly within the next years as a result of the following Mega Trends i.e. de-carbonization, urbanization, fast technology development, individualization, glocalization (globalization and localization) and changing demographics. Increasing fluctuating renewable production will change the role of non-renewable generation. Distributed energy from renewables and microgeneration will change the direction of the energy flow in the electricity grids. Production will not follow demand but demand has to follow production. This future system is enabled by the fast technical development of information and communication technologies which will be present in the entire system. In this paper, the results of a comprehensive analysis with different scenarios are summarized. Tools were used as the analysis of policy trends in the European countries, modelling of the European power grid, modelling of the European power markets and the analysis of technology developments with cost reduction potentials. With these tools, the interaction of the main actors in the energy markets like conventional generation and renewable generation, grid transport, electricity storage including new storage options from E-mobility, the power to gas, compressed air energy storage and demand-side management were considered. The potential application of technologies and investments in new energy technologies were analyzed within existing frameworks and markets as well as new business models in new markets with different frameworks. In the paper, the overall trend of this analysis is presented by describing a potential future energy world. The future energy world will be characterized by new key elements compared to the very deterministic energy system of the past. In the same respect transportation of the energy from central generation through the grids to the consumers was predictable with very high accuracy of some per cent of the load for more or less the entire year in advance.