CenSES Annual Report 2015

CenSES annual report 2015

Bergen Economics of Energy and Environment

Research (BEEER) conference

NHH hosted the 6th annual Bergen Economics of Energy

and Environment Research (BEEER) conference in May

2015. The event was a great success, bringing together the

research community to focus on the economics of energy

and environment with participants from all over Norway

and Europe. The keynote speaker was Geir Asheim from the

University of Oslo who presented research demonstrating the

necessity of global cooperation to tackle climate change if we

care enough about the future of our children and our

grandchildren. Among the many diverse topics in the program,

Linda Nøstbakken presented research showing strong link

between innovation in renewable energy and storage using

global patent data. The conference also attracted several

international contributors from institutions in Ireland,

Denmark and Germany.

International cooperation

Visits and research stays

Asgeir Tomasgard has had a special visitor grant under the

«Science without borders program» in Brazil. He has since

the start of the cooperation stayed several weeks every year

at UFSC in Florianopolis, and at IMPA in Rio de Janeiro. The

cooperation is about developing decision support models for

combined planning of hydropower and thermal resources in

the Brazilian energy system. The cooperation will continue

throughout 2016.

Research exchange with École

Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada

PhD-student Sara Séguin, from Quebec, Canada, visited

CenSES in the period 23. March to 23. July. She studies the

optimal operation of hydropower dams and cooperates

Japan Norway Energy Science Week in Tokyo

Together with the University of Bergen and the Norwegian

Research Council, CenSES professor Vivian Lagesen arranged

a session on «Energy, Environment and Society» at the Japan

Norway Energy Science Week in Tokyo. CenSES professors

Knut H. Sørensen, Marianne Ryghaug and Vivian A. Lagesen

all presented papers under the conference; Sørensen on «The

Norwegian energy regime: The troubled co-production of

economic efficiency, climate concerns, and an oil economy»,

Ryghaug and Lagesen on «Creating energy citizenship in

an oil economy». The session was focused on the fact that

a transition to a more renewable energy system, and a low

carbon society both in Japan and Norway will not only

demand development of a larger scale infrastructure, but

also cultural and political transformations. The presentations

included a broad specter of topics and perspectives from

different climate sciences, mathematics, laws, political science

and sociology.

with the power energineering group of Rio Tinti Alca, a large

aluminium producer. She studies short term load allocation

based on optimizing under insecurity. Local host is Stein-Erik

Fleten, Institute of Industrial Ecology.

Visiting researcher from University of

Bergamo

CenSES had a visiting researcher, Francesco Piu, from the

University of Bergamo for three months at the center. He

works on a project about electricity transmission with post

doc Alois Pichler, Prof. Asgeir Tomasgard and Prof. Maria-

Teresa Vespucci.

The research group employs stochastic programming

to combine the analysis of operational and investment

decisions required for creating switching devices (switches).

The switches investment problem is a two stage (inner

and outer), nonlinear stochastic optimization problem.

Given the solution of the Optimal Transmission Switching

(OTS) problem (inner problem) we can solve the optimal

investment problem (outer problem). Piu is working

on the solution of the (OTS) problem by identifying the

switching actions that minimize the power production

cost. The OTS is often computationally intractable, thereby

Piu have implemented a heuristic solution of the OTS. The

researchers successfully tested the heuristic on medium and

large networks. The aim is to solve the switches investment

problem on real-life networks, therefore creating a model of

the Nordic transmission grid.

Dr. Vitor Luiz de Matos, Dr. Claudia Sagastizabal, prof. Asgeir Tomasgard and

Prof. Erlon Cristian Finardi while modelling Hydro-thermal scheduling under

uncertainty