Highly Optimized Energy Systems

Highly Optimized Energy Systems (HOPE)

The management of increasingly complex energy systems is a challenge that requires new tools to perform it efficiently. In addition to increasing complexity, the uncertainty in the energy production and consumption increases due to increasing amount of intermittent renewable energy generation and more involvement in the demand side.

The Highly Optimized Energy Systems (HOPE) project is established to support the industry actors to develop solutions to increase energy efficiency within energy networks and advance cross-sectoral integration. Aim of the research is to develop tools and solutions for the multi-objective optimization of energy systems by taking into account the operating conditions and uncertainty. This enables optimization to be adapted to the prevailing conditions. Use of advanced weather forecasts aims to improve predictions on the state of energy devices and enable the inclusion of the uncertainty in the optimization. The integration of heat and electricity including production, distribution and demand aims to more efficient energy systems. The project started from CLIC ProjectBooster process.

The project HOPE consists of four Work Packages (WPs) which approach the business opportunities from different perspectives:

WP 1: Data to serve decision-making – focusing on acquiring and providing high-quality data from different sources related to weather, markets and energy network.

WP 2: Tools for forecasting and controlling devices and processes – providing improved forecast on the operation of energy devices by incorporating all the available data.

WP 3: Tools for system scale – studying the multi-criteria optimization of energy systems for a portfolio of feasible devices to develop a highly scalable solution for diverse environments.

WP 4: Market scale: scenarios and cost-benefit analysis – study on business opportunities for an integrated group of service providers.

Benefit and competitive advantage of the solution

The project aims to solve problems by applying multiobjective optimization approach to the energy system with integration of heat and electricity. This provides new tools for the operational optimization of energy systems and takes into account the production, distribution and demand. Optimization solution will be modular and use advanced predictions on energy production and consumption. Integration of heat and electricity is expected to reveal new. synergies in the energy system. With this approach better management of energy systems can be achieved increasing the overall energy efficiency of the systems. Modular optimization solution facilitates the applicability of the approach to different systems. Furthermore, the project provides environment for new business models.

Target markets and global market potential

The project provides a foundation for a platform business model that has great commercial potential on a global scale. The aim of the HOPE project is to generate over 1 billion new revenue in the next 10 years after the project has ended.

The industrial partners with own parallel research projects include seven companies: Oulun Energia, ABB, Fortum, Single Wing Energy, HögforsGST, Fidelix and Vexve. In addition, Valmet Automation, Sumitomo SHI FW, Vaisala and Oilon participate as collaborative partners in Advisory Board. The research organizations of the consortium are University of Oulu (UO), Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT), VTT and Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE).