40 barriers to flexibility – and how to solve them

“Anything that exists is possible” as Boulding’s first law prescribes. I was wondering why, in some places of the world, district energy systems were very flexibly integrated with the electricity system – while in other parts, they were not. So I set out to explore the existence of flexible sector coupling.

This resulted in the study that is the focus of today’s episode.

Anyone working with sector coupling and flexibility may benefit from listening in – if they can bear a 30-minute talk by me. Or else, dig directly into the resources referenced below.

---

Scientific paper - Barriers to flexibility in the district energy-electricity system interface – A taxonomy

Policy brief – Barriers to flexibility

Interactive version – Play around at your own pace

---

The Energy Transition Show with Chris Nelder is highly recommendable, and has recently hosted an episode with me as a guest (the upside is TWO middle-aged men chatting, instead of just ONE in this episode…). So give it a listen as well!

The FlexSUS project has received funding in the framework of the joint programming initiative ERA-Net Smart Energy Systems’ focus initiative Integrated, Regional Energy Systems, with support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 775970.

Sound design by Dea Cisar.

Hosted and produced by Daniel Sneum, Sustainability Division, Technical University of Denmark - comments welcome @DistrictEnergyD.

Please rate + share with your colleagues, so we can get fresh research into new ears and brains!