Completed Projects

The aim of this project is to develop computational framework for the simulations of cells in flows. In order to achieve this goal, we will develop a new cell model and software efficiently exploiting modern supercomputers. The model will be extensively validated using quantitative experimental data provided by our collaborators.

In most natural sciences computational research—and in particular high performance computing (HPC)—has become a strong, well-established third pillar, alongside with theory and experimentation. In some of these fields HPC systems can probably be considered as the most powerful and flexible research instruments available today and allow researchers to ask questions that would otherwise be impossible to address. In contrast, there is almost no work in economics that takes advantage of high-performance computing. This might seem surprising given that many economic models display highly non-linear dynamics and are very difficult to solve numerically and given that the HPC community has been reaching out actively to non-traditional fields over the last couple of years. One possible reasons for this fact is that economists do not have the skills to perform high-performance computations and do not have large enough research-groups to hire computer scientists to help them (as it is done routinely in the natural sciences).

The main research challenge of the WP2 is to build a realistic technical model of the Swiss energy system including the transmission systems, which model can be used for planning, operation, and economic evaluation of the system. This model must comprise: (i) location of renewable generation and the limited predictability of these sources; (ii) location of storage devices, both large scale, i.e. pumped hydro storage, and distributed devices; (iii) interconnections with regional grids; (iv) interconnections on the bulk power level, i.e. high voltage lines and gas pipelines; (v) possibility to interface it with models for market and other economic simulations.\nThis work involves the modelling of individual components, which requires interaction with other WPs and possibly other SCCER, but also the development of a general system framework taking into account different energy carriers. Furthermore, since the model will be of very high order and complexity, it should be formulated in such a way that large-scale optimization methods could be applied. In this way different optimization objectives could be used in the planning and operation of the system. The results from the optimization have to be robust.\nThe developed models should cover both slowly varying phenomena, i.e. time scale of minutes, but also faster phenomena, i.e. time scale of seconds. The models used for studying and analysing phenomena of different time scales will be different but with the same architecture. Another research challenge is the dynamics of a system with considerably lower inertia than the existing systems. Innovative geoinformation system will be used to identify locations for renewable generation and storage devices. The developed model, achieved with real data related to the system, is expected to be a powerful tool for optimizing the future Swiss energy system in terms of planning and operation.