Future Transmission Lab - Amprion: Impact of societal change on future load behaviour, flexibility potential and the electricity system, taking into account regionalized and typologized effects

The transformation of the energy system towards a climate-neutral energy supply entails far-reaching changes. Energy system and electricity market models are used to analyze this change and take it into account in the further development of the electricity system, including grid requirements. Assumptions are also made about the level and timing of electricity demand on the basis of historical or standard load profiles. Changes in the demand for electricity - due to changing lifestyles and the technology used, digital coordination options and new, regionally different contexts, also with regard to the technologies used and the logic of self-use in the coming decades - should also be included in the analyses of the development of the electricity system, as they have a significant influence on the design of a suitable overall system. In addition, it is known from numerous studies that the demand for electricity in the future system must be made more flexible in order to efficiently integrate the high proportion of fluctuating renewable energies into the electricity system. The potential available for this also depends on the decisions, lifestyles and socio-technical possibilities on the demand side.

The research focus of the planned work within Amprion's Future Transmission Lab (https://www.futuretransmissionlab.de/) is the analysis of the influence of future technological and social change on electricity demand and its available and usable flexibility potential (e.g. for e-mobility and e-heat). Spatial distribution and typologized behaviour will be taken into account. The planned work builds in part on the ongoing GeNESE project.

The following research objectives result from the overall project:

• Analysis of the influence of technological changes on electricity demand at a high spatial and temporal resolution for the household, tertiary sector, transport and energy-intensive industry sectors
• Analysis of the effects of changes in demand by selected actors and groups of actors due to future changes in lifestyle and coordination options and regional differences
• Influence of different incentive structures on demand structures including temporal patterns
• Impact of “flexibility capital” (skills, technologies, socio-technical arrangements, etc.) and increased plurality of individual demand decisions on available and usable flexibility potential in the system in spatial resolution and depending on different incentive structures
• Determination of the effects of points 1) to 3) in the electricity system in spatial distribution on the basis of a typification to be developed of the areas under consideration and the living conditions prevailing there (e.g. rural area vs. urbanized area)

ZIRIUS develops a typology of changes in demand (together with the IER) and compiles a list of demand-relevant strategies as well as structural, behavioral, socio-economic developments/drivers for further analysis. From this, consistent scenarios of future demand are developed with Cross-Impact Balance analysis (CIB) with a particular focus on possible spatial changes in demand-side flexibility.