Benefits to single country modelling: Comparing 14 interconnected individual country models to a single 14-country model

With the transition to 100% renewable energy system based on variable renewable energy, the flexibility of the energy system has to be found in the overall system design. To increase the potential system flexibility, one of the main sectors that need to transition is the heating sector, which needs to utilize more electricity instead of fuel. This can be done through the implementation of heat pumps either in individually heated buildings or in connection with district heating systems. The Heat Roadmap Europe 4 study, investigates how this can be done in 14 European countries. These countries will furthermore all be interconnected through transmission cables, which also will generate flexibility.
The combination of gaining flexibility through the heating sector and interconnection can be analyzed either using a single aggregate model of all the countries, or by modelling each country by itself and modelling the exchange of electricity between each country. This study investigates the consequences of those two different approaches in terms of assessing the integration of renewable energy in future renewable energy scenario. This is done by utilising EnergyPLAN and the new tool EPlanFlow that combines individual country modelling in EnergyPLAN with an analysis of transmission of electricity based on the PowerFLOW tool.