So, what are the main takeaways?

▶️ Flexible heat pumps with thermal storage can provide valuable flexibility to the heating sector.
▶️ They can reduce the need to build other flexible power plants or storage.

For the nerds 🤓:

* We use the linear cost-minimization model with the sexy name #DIETER, modeling DE and its neighboring countries.
* Scenarios model different heat pump rollouts (1.7, 3, 6, and 10M units) by 2030.
* Electricity demand includes #BEVs and #hydrogen.

Some additional points:

* A heat pump rollout pairs best with wind power but can also work with solar PV and other technologies.
* Small (<2h) heat storage is economically viable, while larger ones are too costly and better suited for heating grids than private households.

3️⃣ By installing more heat pumps, Germany could save natural gas, money, and emissions:
We estimate that annual household CO2 emissions could be reduced by
~ 18% (~14 mil. tons) for 6 million heat pumps
~ 51% 🤯 (~41 mil. tons) for 10 million heat pumps.

2️⃣ Even with small thermal storage, heat pumps can absorb excessive renewable energy in the system. Instead of producing heat in the evening, when needed, they integrate cheap solar during the day.

Our principal insights are:

1️⃣ If equipped with a small heat thermal storage, heat pumps can store hot water for a few hours. By doing so, they can significantly reduce their peak demand and thus reduce the need for, e.g., batteries or gas-fired power plants.

On the contrary, in hours of high electricity demand, neighbouring countries often also exhibit high demand (B). On top of that, PV feed-in is often low in high-demand hours (A). Wind, on the other hand, is much more heterogeneous.

11/

But what are now the results?

It's mainly wind power: differences in profiles explain around 80% of the drop in storage energy and power.

9/

We also find this effect in our analysis. In our setting, with 12 European countries in a 100%-renewable energy scenario, allowing for exchange between countries leads to a drop of 30% for long-duration storage energy.

6/

Future electricity systems in the EU rely mainly on wind and solar. Many of you ask: what happens when there is no wind or sun?

Electricity storage and interconnection to the rescue! But how do these two interact?

🧵 Get ready for some energy modelling content!

1/

Thanks again for your comment. We have updated the section and figure: openenergytracker.org/en/docs/aust...

Looking at the overall natural gas consumption, last year was indeed an "outlier".

Will this year be the same? Given that prices are lower and the urgency to save gas has somewhat diminshed, we might see fewer savings?

4/n

Last year's heating season saw consistent behavioral savings: they explained most of the savings!

Savings compared to 18-21:
↘ Overall : 15,5%
↘ Behavioral: 13.7%
➡ Weather: 1.8%

The winter was neither cold, nor warm. One cold week in December diminished a big part of the weather savings.

3/n

At the moment, we're only at the beginning of the heating season and consumption is well below last years usual consumption - mostly thanks to lower temperatures.

However, the autumn weeks are not so relevant for overall gas consumption. Relevant are the cold winter weeks!

2/n

❄ Winter is coming and natural gas consumption will increase!

After Russia reduced drastically its supplies to Europe, savings are central to avoid a gas-shortage in Germany. So, how much did we save last year and where are we now?

All figures from openenergytracker.org/en/docs/germ...

A 🧵

1/n

Seems to be more of an east-west thing, at least according to that map, except for Greece.

Source: www.reddit.com/r/europe/com...

Looking forward to interesting exchanges about the energy transition here on Bluesky!
And feel free to check out some of my projects:
📈 Open Energy Tracker (openenergytracker.org) [EN,DE,FR]
🎧 Podcast "fossilfrei" [DE] (www.diw.de/fossilfrei)
Both jointly created the great @wpschill.bsky.social.