Independence from the power grid can be pursued by achieving total self-sufficient electricity supply. Such an energy supply model might be particularly interesting for settlements located in rural areas where enough space is available for energy generation installations. This article evaluates how and at what cost electricity demand of residential users across Germany and the Czech Republic could be covered by hybrid renewable energy generation systems consisting of photovoltaics, micro-generation wind turbines and batteries. High-resolution reanalysis data are used to calculate necessary system sizes over a large area by simultaneously accounting for the temporal variability of renewable energy. For every potential location in the research area, the hybrid system requirements for clusters of 50 self-sufficient single-family houses are calculated. The results indicate no general trend regarding the size of the respective technologies, although larger areas where PV-wind power complementarity enables lowering the total system costs and required storage capacities were determined. Assuming that the cluster of households could be constituted and depending on the location, the total installation and operation costs for the proposed systems for a lifetime of 20 years range between EUR 1.8 Million and EUR 5 Million without considering costs of financing. Regions with the lowest costs were identified mainly in the south of Germany.

Chile and Brazil have been historically recognised in South America for having a high share of renewable sources in their primary energy matrices. Furthermore, in the last two decades, aligned with the global efforts to conduct a sustainable energy transition, both countries have experienced a successful introduction of nonconventional renewable energy for power production. Nevertheless, some experiences with renewable sources have been demonstrated to be not entirely societally and environmentally friendly, as some local human communities and ecosystems are threatened, and conflicts have emerged, regardless of low-emission technology. Using the cases of Chile and Brazil, we aim to explore the socio-ecological dimension of sustainable energy transition—which has sometimes been ignored. We analyse the controversies regarding renewable energy and the emergence of socio-ecological conflicts through the principles of justice in transitions. Critical renewable conflicting power projects are identified using the Atlas of Environmental Justice’s database. Considering those experiences, we believe that reinforcing decision-making processes should be in synergy with identifying new alternatives to develop energy in both countries. Placing justice approaches at the centre of public policies is imperative to developing sustainable policies in the future.

The data set includes hourly time series for a period of one year of electricity demand of three different types of industries. The industries include a small food processing company, one small paper industry and one medium-large paper producing company. The data have been synthetized from two years of measured data from industries in Chile using a comprehensive clustering analysis. The synthetic data possess the same statistical characteristics as the measured data but are provided normalized to one kWh and anonymized in order to be used without confidentiality issues. The data were originally used in the associated paper [1] to assess the demand side management potential of the industries but these can be used for further energy system modelling exercises including these types of industries.

In this study, the possibility of sector coupling with biological Power-to-Methane to support and stabilize the energy transition of the three major sectors of electricity, heat, and gas was addressed. For this purpose, the energy cell simulation methodology and the Calliope tool were utilized for energy system optimization. This combination provides detailed insights into the existing dependencies of consumers and fossil and renewable energy suppliers on a local scale. In this context, Power-to-Methane represents an efficient technology for quickly and effectively exploiting unused electricity potential for various sectors and consumers. It was found that, even in regions with low wind levels, this surplus electricity potential already exists and depends on various influencing factors in very different ways. The solar influence on these potentials was considered in connection with gas-fired cogeneration plants for district heating. It was found that the current heat demand for district heating produces a large amount of electricity and can generate surplus electricity in the winter. However, in the summer, large amounts of usable waste heat are dissipated into the environment, owing to the low consumption of district heat. This problem in the heat sector could be reduced by the expansion of photovoltaics, but this would require further expansion of storage or conversion systems in the electricity sector. This demonstrates that the consideration of several sectors is necessary to reflect the complexity of the sector coupling with Power-to-Methane properly.

This study presents a framework for regional smart energy planning for the optimal location and sizing of small hybrid systems. By using an optimization model – in combination with weather data – various local energy systems are simulated using the Calliope and PyPSA energy system simulation tools. The optimization and simulation models are fed with GIS data from different volunteered geographic information projects, including OpenStreetMap. These allow automatic allocation of specific demand profiles to diverse OpenStreetMap building categories. Moreover, based on the characteristics of the OpenStreetMap data, a set of possible distributed energy resources, including renewables and fossil-fueled generators, is defined for each building category. The optimization model can be applied for a set of scenarios based on different assumptions on electricity prices and technologies. Moreover, to assess the impact of the scenarios on the current distribution infrastructure, a simulation model of the low- and medium-voltage network is conducted. Finally, to facilitate their dissemination, the results of the simulation are stored in a PostgreSQL database, before they are delivered by a RESTful Laravel Server and displayed in an angular web application.