Long Term Energy Planning

Odense, Denmark • Sep 10, 2011

In collaboration with DONG Energy (now Ørsted) we developed a system to assess the long term development of electricity and heat production in Denmark.

The energy sector in Europe faces huge challenges due to the need of drastically reducing CO2 emissions by 2035. To realize the phase out of fossil fuel as primary source for the production of heat and electricity a large number of investments are currently undertaken by power utility companies and they need aiding tools in their decision making processes.

To this end we studied the long term unit commitment problem with heating constraints to model the Danish energy market and yield predictions on its development in case of different strategic choices taken by energy producers. We also developed a model to decide on which biomass contracts to buy, taking the future uncertainty into account by including a number of scenarios for the future demand and prices.

Finally, we developed an algorithm for maintenance scheduling of production plants and for routing tugs and barges that distribute biomass and fossil fuels in the Danish territory.