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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Energy Res.
Sec. Sustainable Energy Systems
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2024.1443506

Flexibility from Industrial Demand-Side Management in Net-Zero Sector-Coupled National Energy Systems

Provisionally accepted
Patricia Mayer Patricia Mayer *Mario Heer Mario Heer David Y. Shu David Y. Shu Nik Zielonka Nik Zielonka Ludger Leenders Ludger Leenders Florian J. Baader Florian J. Baader Andre Bardow Andre Bardow
  • ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    National energy systems require flexibility to accommodate increasing amounts of variable renewable energy. This flexibility can be provided by demand-side management (DSM) from industry. However, the flexibility potential depends on the characteristics of each industrial process.The enormous diversity of industrial processes makes it challenging to evaluate the total flexibility provision from industry to sector-coupled energy systems. In this work, we quantify the maximum cost reductions due to industrial DSM in the net-zero sector-coupled Swiss energy system, and the relationship between cost reductions and various industrial process characteristics. We analyze the flexibility of industrial processes using a generic, process-agnostic model. Our results show that industrial DSM can reduce total energy system costs by up to 4.4%, corresponding to 20% of industry-related energy costs. The value of flexibility from industrial DSM depends not only on the process characteristics but also on the system's flexibility alternatives, particularly for flexibility over seasonal time horizons. As one specific option for industrial DSM, we find that thermal energy storage (TES) technologies available today could realize between 28% and 61% of the maximum cost reductions from industrial DSM, making TES a promising DSM solution and showing that industrial DSM is an accessible and cost-effective flexibility option.

    Keywords: demand response, Flexibility, Sector-coupling, net-zero, Industry, Switzerland, Thermal Energy Storage, optimization

    Received: 04 Jun 2024; Accepted: 18 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Mayer, Heer, Shu, Zielonka, Leenders, Baader and Bardow. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Patricia Mayer, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.