Sennai Mesfun

Sennai Mesfun studies the impact of prolonged adverse weather events in power systems with high share of renewable sources.

Future power dispatch systems are expected to handle a significant share of renewable power such as bioenergy, solar, wind and hydroelectric. Given the uneven distribution of resources globally, systems that enable efficient management of these technologies are crucial.

Using a mathematical simulation of a highly renewable power system coupled with historical reanalysis weather data, I aim to assess (a) the contribution of bioenergy as baseload, (b) the interaction between different technologies, for example, how does hydroelectric seasonal variation interact with intermittency in insolation or wind etc., and (c) the impact of innovative power balancing and storage systems (e.g. power-to-gas). Weather data are being processed for implementation in BeWhere, the model I plan to use. In order to capture periods of interest, BeWhere will be enhanced to handle a temporal dimension.

Preliminary model runs indicate existing bioenergy use in the power sector is too small to play significant load-balancing role.

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Funding: Kempe Foundation, Sweden

Nationality: Erithrean

Program: Ecosystem Services and Management Program

Dates: October 2016 – September 2018


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Last edited: 02 November 2017

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