Dirk Lauinger | EPFL Graph Search

Hi! My name is Dirk and I'm a PhD Candidate in Management of Technology. Together with Prof. Daniel Kuhn and Dr. Francois Vuille, I research how vehicle-to-grid (V2G) can be used to pair fluctuating electricity production and consumption with the fluctuating availability of electric vehicles parked at charging stations. Through mathematical models, we examine technical, economic, regulatory, social, and environmental aspects of V2G deployment. I'm particularly interested in island energy and mobility systems.

I have a M.Sc. degree in Energy Management and Sustainability and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, both from EPFL.

Dataset for the article "Frequency regulation with storage: On losses and profits"

Daniel Kuhn, Dirk Lauinger, François Richard Vuille

This dataset complements the article "Frequency regulation with storage: On losses and profits" by Dirk Lauinger, François Vuille, and Daniel Kuhn, available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.02987. The dataset contains the following files: 1. Case_study.ipynb, which relies on the datafiles delta_10s.h5, pa.h5, pb.h5, and pd.h5 to construct all figures in the article. The jupyter notebook is also available at https://github.com/lauinger/cost-of-frequency-regulation-through-electricity-storage. 2. delta_10s.h5, which contains normalized frequency deviations with a 10s resolution from 1 January 2015 through 31 December 2019. This dataset is constructed from the raw frequency measurement data in build_delta_10s.rar. The frequency measurements are taken from the website of the French transmission system operator RTE: https://www.services-rte.com/en/download-data-published-by-rte.html?category=public_transmission_system&type=network_frequencies (link live as of 7 June 2023). 3. pa.h5, which contains availability prices for delivering frequency regulation to RTE from 1 January 2015 through 31 December 2019. This dataset is constructed from the raw price data in build_price_data.rar. The availability price data are taken from the website of the French transmission system operator RTE: https://www.services-rte.com/en/download-data-published-by-rte.html?activation_key%3D291fafe6-4f21-4603-810f-0c96b0ea126f%26activation_type%3Dpublic=true&category=market&type=balancing_capacity&subType=procured_reserves (link live as of 7 June 2023). 4. pd.h5, which contains delivery prices for delivering frequency regulation to RTE from 1 January 2015 through 31 December 2019. This dataset is constructed from the raw price data in build_price_data.rar. The delivery price data are taken from the website of the French transmission system operator RTE: https://www.services-rte.com/en/download-data-published-by-rte.html?activation_key%3D291fafe6-4f21-4603-810f-0c96b0ea126f%26activation_type%3Dpublic=true&category=market&type=balancing_capacity&subType=actived_offers (link live as of 7 June 2023). 5. pb.h5, which contains utility prices for a subscribed apparent power of 9kVA from the state regulated "tarif bleu" of EDF, the largest electricity provider in France. This dataset is constructed from the raw price data in build_price_data.rar. Current price data (including taxes and transportation fees) is available at https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Offres/Grille_prix_Tarif_Bleu.pdf. The French Energy Department publishes the electricity prices in the official French Government journal. The corresponding legal texts are accessible under the following links: 01/11/2014 - 31/07/2015: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000033172637 01/08/2015 - 31/07/2016: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000030954456 01/08/2016 - 31/07/2017: https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/contrib/collectivite/electricite-et-gaz/CGV%2018avril/jo_du_29_juillet_2016_trv.pdf 01/08/2017 - 31/01/2018: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000035297675 01/02/2018 - 31/07/2018: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000036559814 01/08/2018 - 31/05/2019: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000037262170 01/06/2019 - 01/08/2019: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000038528381 01/08/2019 - 31/12/2019: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000038850867 These prices exclude taxes and transportation fees. The "Option Base" offers a flat price throughout the day. The "Option Heures Creuses" has a higher price for peak (6:00-22:00) than off-peak (22:00-6:00) hours. EDF refers to peak hours as "Heures Pleines (HP)" and to off-peak hours as "Heures Creuses (HC)". The prices of these options only change, when EDF changes its electricity tariffs, which is up to three times per year. Conversely, the "Option Tempo" is a pricing scheme in which each day is either a high-price ("Rouge"), medium-price ("Blanc") or low-price ("Bleu") day. The price level of each day is announced by 10:30 am on the previous day. RTE, the French transmission system operator, keeps track of the daily price levels (https://www.services-rte.com/en/view-data-published-by-rte/schedule-of-Tempo-type-supply-offerings.html). The price data can be downloaded from RTE's eco2mix platform (https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/telecharger-les-indicateurs). {"references": ["Dirk Lauinger, Francois Vuille, and Daniel Kuhn (2023). Decouple code and data associated to https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.02987", "RTE frequency measurements: https://www.services-rte.com/en/download-data-published-by-rte.html?category=public_transmission_system&type=network_frequencies (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "RTE availability prices: https://www.services-rte.com/en/download-data-published-by-rte.html?activation_key%3D291fafe6-4f21-4603-810f-0c96b0ea126f%26activation_type%3Dpublic=true&category=market&type=balancing_capacity&subType=procured_reserves (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "RTE delivery prices: https://www.services-rte.com/en/download-data-published-by-rte.html?activation_key%3D291fafe6-4f21-4603-810f-0c96b0ea126f%26activation_type%3Dpublic=true&category=market&type=balancing_capacity&subType=actived_offers (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "EDF current utility prices: https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Offres/Grille_prix_Tarif_Bleu.pdf (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "French utility prices 01/11/2014 - 31/07/2015: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000033172637 (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "French utility prices 01/08/2015 - 31/07/2016: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000030954456 (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "French utility prices 01/08/2016 - 31/07/2017: https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/contrib/collectivite/electricite-et-gaz/CGV%2018avril/jo_du_29_juillet_2016_trv.pdf (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "French utility prices 01/08/2017 - 31/01/2018: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000035297675 (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "French utility prices 01/02/2018 - 31/07/2018: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000036559814 (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "French utility prices 01/08/2018 - 31/05/2019: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000037262170 (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "French utility prices 01/06/2019 - 01/08/2019: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000038528381 (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "French utility prices 01/08/2019 - 31/12/2019: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000038850867 (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "Tarif tempo (past data): https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/telecharger-les-indicateurs (link live as of 7 June 2023)", "Tarif tempo (current day): https://www.services-rte.com/en/view-data-published-by-rte/schedule-of-Tempo-type-supply-offerings.html (link live as of 7 June 2023)"]}

Zenodo2023

Frequency Regulation with Storage: On Losses and Profits

Daniel Kuhn, Dirk Lauinger, François Richard Vuille

Low-carbon societies will need to store vast amounts of electricity to balance intermittent generation from wind and solar energy, for example, through frequency regulation. Here, we derive an analytical solution to the decision-making problem of storage operators who sell frequency regulation power to grid operators and trade electricity on day-ahead markets. Mathematically, we treat future frequency deviation trajectories as functional uncertainties in a receding horizon robust optimization problem. We constrain the expected terminal state-of-charge to be equal to some target to allow storage operators to make good decisions not only for the present but also the future. Thanks to this constraint, the amount of electricity traded on day-ahead markets is an implicit function of the regulation power sold to grid operators. The implicit function quantifies the amount of power that needs to be purchased to cover the expected energy loss that results from providing frequency regulation. We show how the marginal cost associated with the expected energy loss decreases with roundtrip efficiency and increases with frequency deviation dispersion. We find that the profits from frequency regulation over the lifetime of energy-constrained storage devices are roughly inversely proportional to the length of time for which regulation power must be committed.

2023

Vehicle-to-Grid for Reliable Frequency Regulation

Dirk Lauinger

Future low-carbon societies will need to store vast amounts of electricity to stabilize electricity grids and to power electric vehicles. Vehicle-to-grid allows vehicle owners and grid operators to share the costs of electricity storage by making the batteries of electric vehicles available to the grid. In practice, vehicle owners decide when to reserve their cars for driving and when to make them available for grid services. Vehicle aggregators then decide how to commit the vehicles to grid services. For vehicle-to-grid to succeed, both vehicle owners and grid operators must be able to trust aggregators, i.e., vehicles should be available for driving and for grid services when the aggregators promise they will be. In this thesis, we solve a decision-making problem that ensures reliable commitments by vehicle aggregators for a particular grid service known as primary frequency regulation, considered one of the most profitable applications of vehicle-to-grid. Mathematically, we first formulate a robust optimization problem with functional uncertainties that maximizes the expected profit from selling primary frequency regulation to grid operators and guarantees that vehicle owners can meet their market commitments for all frequency deviation trajectories in an uncertainty set that encodes applicable European Union regulations. Functional uncertainties ensure that vehicle owners and grid operators can trust the decisions of aggregators at all times. Faithfully modeling the energy conversion losses during battery charging and discharging renders the optimization problem nonconvex. By exploiting a total unimodularity property of the proposed uncertainty sets and an exact linear decision rule reformulation, we prove that the nonconvex robust optimization problem with functional uncertainties is equivalent to a tractable linear program. Somewhat counterintuitively, the underlying deterministic problem for a known frequency deviation trajectory does not reduce to a linear program but results in a large-scale mixed-integer linear program, even if time is discretized. We believe that we have thus discovered the first practically interesting class of optimization problems that become dramatically easier through robustification. Through extensive numerical experiments using real-world data, we quantify the economic value of vehicle-to-grid and elucidate the financial incentives of vehicle owners, aggregators, equipment manufacturers, and regulators. In particular, we find that the prevailing penalties for non-delivery of promised regulation power are too low to incentivize aggregators to honor their promises toward grid operators. For general electricity storage devices, we then solve a simplified version of the decision-making problem analytically to understand how the optimal frequency regulation commitments depend on the roundtrip efficiency of the storage device, the dispersion of the frequency deviations, and the EU delivery guarantee. We show how the marginal cost of frequency regulation decreases with roundtrip efficiency and increases with frequency deviation dispersion. For energy-constrained storage devices, we find that the profits from frequency regulation are inversely proportional to the length of time for which storage operators commit regulation power. Establishing an intra-day market for frequency regulation would thus make electricity storage devices more competitive with other regulation providers, such as thermal power plants.

EPFL2022

Vehicle-to-Grid for Reliable Frequency Regulation

Dirk Lauinger

EPFL2022

Dataset for the article "Frequency regulation with storage: On losses and profits"

Daniel Kuhn, Dirk Lauinger, François Richard Vuille

Zenodo2023