SektorSim³

In order to become carbon neutral in the building and mobility sectors, these sectors will increasingly use electricity for the provision of heating and cooling as well as for transportation and, in the case of buildings, generate their own electricity via photovoltaic systems. This raises a number of questions, such as: How does electricity demand evolve over the year and at peak? What are the positive interactions between heat pumps, PV systems and e-mobiles? How much do electricity distribution grids need to be expanded?

The answers will vary depending on the neighborhood.

In the SektorSim³ research project, the future development of electromobility, heat pumps and rooftop PV as well as the interactions between the building heat, mobility and electricity generation sectors are analyzed for a wide range of neighborhood types. The future mobility behavior with an increasing share of e-vehicles is an important aspect: The behavior of the users, the available battery capacities and the use of batteries in the context of bidirectional charging are investigated by new model approaches and connected with existing models for the simulation of building energy demands and thus the electricity demand of heat pumps as well as PV rooftop potentials.

• How do electric mobility, rooftop photovoltaics and heat pumps develop until 2040 in different neighborhood archetypes?
• What are the net and gross electricity loads in the neighborhood archetypes?
• How will the power grid of the future develop, taking into account increasing load and demand, and what measures will this require?
• What business models arise for operators of power generation facilities and charging infrastructures?
• How can the transfer or transferability of the project results succeed in the area, in particular to municipal actors?

First, about ten representative neighborhood archetypes will be defined and linked to real neighborhoods in the project municipalities Stuttgart and Kornwestheim. Then, the main objective is to forecast the developments of electromobility, heat pumps and rooftop PV for each neighborhood type until 2040 and to model the implications on electricity demand in a geographically and temporally very high resolution. Existing models as well as publications and already developed tools, such as the SimStadt tool, which has been in continuous development at HFT since 2012, serve as the basis for developing the forecasts. For the area of mobility, the mobility behavior is first examined on the basis of the modal split and driving profiles are created in order to use them for the battery availability in neighborhoods.

The core objective is to develop forecasts of electric mobility, heat pumps and rooftop PV for the most important neighborhood archetypes and to implement them in a tool that can be used throughout Germany for any neighborhood in order to create a planning basis for implementation.