Four Themes Shaping the Future of the Stormy European Power Market

Euro Energy details in play  ... 

Four themes shaping the Future of the Stormy European Power Market

January 27, 2023 | Article    in McKinsey

By Markus Schülde,  Xavier Veillard  and  Alexander Weiss 

Demand for electricity in Europe is surging at a time when supplies are disrupted. To adapt to the market’s uncertainty and rising prices, players will have to be clear-eyed about what’s ahead.

The past year has been a tumultuous one for European energy markets. After experiencing extreme volatility and all-time highs little more than a year ago,1 power prices across the continent rose to a nearly unfathomable level last fall. Wholesale prices of both electricity and natural gas nearly quadrupled from previous records in the third quarter of 2022 compared with 2021, creating concerns for skyrocketing energy costs for consumers and businesses (Exhibit 1). Prices have since fallen unexpectedly, thanks in part to warm winter weather.

Such volatility highlights the structural challenges Europe faces as it seeks to transition its energy system away from carbon-emitting fossil fuels. At a time when these decarbonization efforts are boosting electricity demand across Europe, the market is reeling from unprecedented supply constraints. The war in Ukraine, disruptions to nuclear facilities in France, and low output from hydroelectric plants have combined to significantly reduce the continent’s dispatchable power—electricity that can be easily switched on and off. Primarily driven by drought, hydro output was down by 19 percent between January and September 2022 across Europe, compared with the same period in 2021.2 In France, where 32 of the country’s 56 reactors were down for maintenance in September, nuclear energy output has declined by 14 percent over the same period (Exhibit 2).3 Even more destabilizing is the dwindling supply of Russian gas. Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, Russia supplied 30 percent of Europe’s natural gas, a resource that exerts a large influence on electricity prices and is a mainstay of the continent’s power mix. That proportion dropped to 15 to 20 percent in 2022 and is likely to decline further this year..... ' 

Need of Advances for Electric Trucks

 On the use of electric trucks, and what they will need to make them broadly viable.

Electric trucks can go the (short) distance

To electrify the entire industry, battery technology and charging infrastructure would have to improve.  by Casey Crownhart

While some trucks cover over a thousand miles in a day, others operate at short range. These vehicles are more feasible for electrification in the near term, according to Brennan Borlaug, a researcher at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the lead author of a recent Nature Energy study on electric-truck charging infrastructure.        ... " 

Sample Patterns and Predictions

 Like to see examples of this type to show what can be done with emerging tech. 

Open Source AI Can Predict Electrical Outages from Storms with 81% Accuracy  by Anthony Alford in Infoq

Development Group Manager at Genesys Cloud Services

A team of scientists from Aalto University and the Finnish Meteorological Institute have developed an open-source AI model for predicting electrical outages caused by storm damage. The model can predict storm location within 15km and classifies the amount of transformer damage with 81% accuracy, allowing power companies to prepare for outages and repair them more quickly.

The work was described in an article published in the European Geosciences Union's (EGU) Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) journal. The model predicts damage to power transformers from large low-pressure storms up to 10 days in advance, categorizing the results as either no damage, low damage (less than 140 transformers damaged), or high (more than 140). The predictions are based on a support-vector classifier, which achieves 81% precision and 61% recall. Using this model, power companies can prepare materials and repair crews, restoring power to customers more quickly.

Because Finland is a heavily forested country, its overhead power lines are often damaged by falling trees, especially during strong extratropical storms; on average, about 46% of the country's power outages were caused by these storms. Because the power suppliers are required by law to provide their customers with financial compensation for prolonged outages, the companies maintain a large workforce for rapid repair. While several researchers have applied AI techniques to predict power outages from hurricanes, as well as damage to trees (not surprisingly, random forests work quite well for this task), there has been little work specifically on power outages due to extratropical storms. ... '

Battery Free Ocean Exploration?

Towards automation and empowering sensors in varying environments.  Piezoelectronics always an interest too.

An Underwater Navigation System Powered by Sound,  MIT News, Daniel Ackerman

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers built a battery-free underwater navigation system that reflects modulated signals from its environment in order to provide positioning information without expending energy. Underwater Backscatter Localization (UBL) employs piezoelectric sensors that produce their own electricity in response to mechanical stress, and use that power to selectively reflect soundwaves. A receiver translates the backscatter sequence into a pattern of 1s and 0s that conveys information about ocean temperature or salinity. To overcome the problem of myriad surface and seabed reflections complicating localization, the observation unit transmits a signal sequence across a range of frequencies, each at a different wavelength; the reflected sound waves return to the unit in different phases, with combined timing and phase data pinpointing distances to the tracking device. MIT’s Fadel Adib said, “We’re hoping to understand the ocean at scale. It’s a long-term vision, but that’s what we’re working toward and what we’re excited about.”

Partnership that Revolutionized Battery Research at Argonne

Big believed in partnerships.   Some recent conversations have further strengthened that.   My company used to be a big maker of batteries, but it seems never took them much further.

The historical partnership that revolutionized battery research at Argonne
by Joan Koka, Argonne National Laboratory

Argonne scientists Jason Croy, Manar Ishwait and Michael Murphy assemble lithium-ion battery electrodes for testing. Credit: Mark Lopez / Argonne National Laboratory
Researchers around the world are on the hunt to find cheaper, better lithium-ion battery materials to power large scale machines, such as electric vehicles. One of their goals is to find alternative lithium-metal-oxide electrodes to those containing cobalt, an element common within phone and laptop batteries but too expensive and short on capacity to propel electric vehicles over long distances.


For decades, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have taken part in the pursuit to uncover battery materials that perform as well as, if not better than, the ones we use today. Among the materials they're investigating are manganese-rich compounds, because manganese is abundant and inexpensive; lithium-manganese oxides are also thermally safer to use, but not as energy dense as their cobalt counterparts.

The laboratory's study of manganese-rich materials is shaped by the work that Argonne Emeritus Fellow Michael Thackeray has been doing since the early 1980s. While a postdoc at Oxford University in 1981-1982, Thackeray worked alongside battery scientist John Goodenough, one of the Nobel-prize winning architects of the modern lithium-cobalt-oxide battery.The historical partnership that revolutionized battery research at Argonne
by Joan Koka, Argonne National Laboratory

Argonne scientists Jason Croy, Manar Ishwait and Michael Murphy assemble lithium-ion battery electrodes for testing. Credit: Mark Lopez / Argonne National Laboratory

Researchers around the world are on the hunt to find cheaper, better lithium-ion battery materials to power large scale machines, such as electric vehicles. One of their goals is to find alternative lithium-metal-oxide electrodes to those containing cobalt, an element common within phone and laptop batteries but too expensive and short on capacity to propel electric vehicles over long distances.

For decades, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have taken part in the pursuit to uncover battery materials that perform as well as, if not better than, the ones we use today. Among the materials they're investigating are manganese-rich compounds, because manganese is abundant and inexpensive; lithium-manganese oxides are also thermally safer to use, but not as energy dense as their cobalt counterparts.

The laboratory's study of manganese-rich materials is shaped by the work that Argonne Emeritus Fellow Michael Thackeray has been doing since the early 1980s. While a postdoc at Oxford University in 1981-1982, Thackeray worked alongside battery scientist John Goodenough, one of the Nobel-prize winning architects of the modern lithium-cobalt-oxide battery.... "

Towards a Software Defined Power Grid

Definition and value of a software defined power grid.

The Software-Defined Power Grid Is Here in IEEE Spectrum
It’s time to move away from our antiquated, hardware-dependent power grid to a modern, digital software-based grid
By Patrick T. Lee

My colleagues and I have been spending a lot of time on a project in Onslow, a remote coastal town of 850 in Western Australia, where a wealth of solar, wind power, and battery storage has come on line to complement the region’s traditional forms of power generation. We’re making sure that all of these distributed energy resources work as a balanced and coordinated system. The team has traveled more than 15,000 kilometers from our company headquarters in San Diego, and everyone is excited to help the people of Onslow and Western Australia’s electric utility Horizon Power.

Like other rural utilities around the world, Horizon faces an enormous challenge in providing reliable electricity to hundreds of small communities scattered across a wide area. Actually, calling this a “wide area” is a serious understatement: Horizon’s territory covers some 2.3million square kilometers—about one and a half times the size of Alaska. You can’t easily traverse all that territory with high-tension power lines and substations, so local power generation is key. And as the country tries to shrink its carbon footprint, Horizon is working with its customers to decrease their reliance on nonrenewable energy. The incentives for deploying renewables such as photovoltaics and wind turbines are compelling.  ... " 

Smart Meters not Influencing Electric Usage

Have always been interested in the influence of measurements, and the presentation of those measurements to influence behavior.   Many of our smart home experiments have tried to include that aspect of delivery.   Our home is fitted with a 'smart meter'.  Yet in this case Smart Meters are not doing the job:

Smart meters have little impact on people's energy usage habits, research finds  by Keele University in TechExplore

When the Smart Meter Rollout Programme launched a decade ago, it was touted as a way of helping consumers cut down on their energy usage, but new research has found that environmental concerns have little impact on reducing energy consumption.


Smart meters were introduced to allow customers to manage their energy use and it was hoped they would save money on bills and lessen their environmental impact by reducing energy demand, as well as changing their attitudes towards their energy use.

But new research by Keele University using focus groups has found that 10 years after the programme was rolled out, people's awareness around strategies for improving our energy efficiency is still only limited.

The findings also showed that environmental concerns are not a key driver in promoting energy reduction behaviours, not because participants don't care about the environment but because they felt a reduction in their energy consumption would have very little impact on the environment.  ... "

Cost of Electricity Affordable, but not Decreasing

Useful details on electric power currently and in the near future.   Useful as a baseline for establishing manufacturing costs.

Electricity: It’s Wonderfully Affordable, But it’s No Longer Getting Any Cheaper

The generations-long trend toward lower prices reversed around the turn of the century, and increasing use of solar and wind power is part of the reason why   By Vaclav Smil

The generations-old trend toward lower electricity prices now appears to have ended. In many affluent countries, prices tilted upward at the turn of the century, and they continue to rise, even after adjusting for inflation.

Even so, the price we pay for electricity is an extraordinary bargain, and that’s why this form of power has become ubiquitous in the modern world. When expressed in constant 2019 dollars, the average price of electricity in the United States fell from $4.79 per kilowatt-hour in 1902 (the first year for which the national mean is available) to 32 cents in 1950. The price had dropped to 10 cents by 2000, and in late 2019 it was just marginally higher, at about 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. This represents a relative decline of more than 97 percent. A dollar now buys nearly 44 times as much electricity as it did in 1902.

Because average inflation-adjusted manufacturing wages have quadrupled since 1902, blue-collar households now find electricity about 175 times as affordable as it was nearly 120 years ago. And it gets better: We buy electricity in order to convert it into light, kinetic energy, or heat, and the improved efficiency of such conversions have made the end uses of electricity an even greater bargain. ... "

Body Sensors Use Gathered Power

Another example of the use of body gathered power.

Sticker sensor monitors your body using wireless power
It wouldn't interfere with your behavior.

Jon Fingas, @jonfingas in Engadget

Wearable body sensors have a common problem: they need power and antennas, and all that equipment leads to bulky devices that influence your behavior. Stanford researchers, however, have developed a system that could be almost imperceptible. Their BodyNet sticker sensor gathers power and transmits data using an RFID connection to a receiver on nearby clothing, making the sensor itself about as comfortable and flexible as an adhesive bandage. It measures subtle changes in skin that provide a wealth of data for the body, whether it's your heartbeat, breathing rate or muscle activity.  .... " 

Cloaking Resource Operations Data in the Cloud

Fascinating play.  How this differ from methods like blockchains?  Maybe better than BC methods?

Creating a Cloak for Grid Data in the Cloud   By Argonne National Laboratory 

Delivering modern electricity is a numbers game. From power plant output to consumer usage patterns, grid operators juggle a complex set of variables to keep the lights on. Cloud-based tools can help manage all of these data, but utility owners and system operators are concerned about security. That concern is keeping them from using the cloud—a collective name for networked Internet computers that provide scalable, flexible, and economical computing power.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory are developing and deploying tools to facilitate cloud computing for grid operations and planning. A framework being developed at Argonne masks sensitive data, allowing grid operators to perform complex calculations in the cloud to determine where and when to dispatch resources. By facilitating these calculations without compromising data security and integrity, the framework helps grid operators take the electricity system into the future while avoiding costly investments in computer infrastructure. ... " 

IBM Predicts Power Disruptions

Intriguing application, one that is using data from IBM's acquisition.     Not much detail here, except for Watson and Weather data.    Will edit in later findings.   See this from the Weather Company, part of IBM:  https://business.weather.com/products/outage-prediction   And more technical.

IBM develops new technology to help prevent power outages in Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - IBM Corp. has developed technology to predict and monitor when and where trees and vegetation threaten power lines which could help improve power supply operations and reduce outages, it said on Wednesday.

Vegetation can cause disruption for energy companies, often growing over or obstructing power transmission lines. Energy suppliers usually deal with this by conducting regular inspections and trimming.

IBM’s system uses data collected by satellites, drones, aerial flights, sensors and weather models to help companies monitor the state and maintenance of hundreds of miles of transmission and distribution lines.

As well as identifying and predicting outage threats, the system can also help with grid reliability, wildfire prevention, storm management and assessment, the company said. ... "

Converting Wifi to Electricity

Converting Wi-Fi signals to electricity with new 2-D materials
Device made from flexible, inexpensive materials could power large-area electronics, wearables, medical devices, and more.

By Rob Matheson | MIT News Office 

Imagine a world where smartphones, laptops, wearables, and other electronics are powered without batteries. Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have taken a step in that direction, with the first fully flexible device that can convert energy from Wi-Fi signals into electricity that could power electronics.

Devices that convert AC electromagnetic waves into DC electricity are known as “rectennas.” The researchers demonstrate a new kind of rectenna, described in a study appearing in Nature today, that uses a flexible radio-frequency (RF) antenna that captures electromagnetic waves — including those carrying Wi-Fi — as AC waveforms. .... " 

Drone Swarms Don't Need a Break

Powerful, yet also scary scenario.    At least now they run out of power.  Note the solution here is in the process of using a swarm this way by collaborating.   The realm of our original research.

Energy Neutral Drone Swarms Can Spy on You Without Taking a Break   in Motherboard by Michael Byrne

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. and Koc University in Turkey propose an Energy Neutral Internet of Drones (enIoD) as a swarm of aerial surveillance robots that operates continuously because charging and data transfer tasks are integrated nearly seamlessly into its function. They note the enIoD would use a hybrid energy harvesting system that does not tap the power grid, with each drone equipped with a solar cell or wind turbine, while the drones themselves serve as the grid connecting each charging station. The researchers also say wireless power transfer systems combined with wireless charging docks distributed across a wide area would enable the drone swarm to fly more or less without interruption. The team says the purpose of this network is to keep track of amateur drones, which they see as a vector for terrorists and other malefactors to attack civilians.  .... " 

AI as the New Electrcity

Interesting thoughts on AI,  Still beware of hyped expectations.  Brains in Alexa or Siri?   Still awaiting that.  In Knowledge@Wharton. 

Why AI is the new Electricity

Just as electricity transformed the way industries functioned in the past century, artificial intelligence — the science of programming cognitive abilities into machines — has the power to substantially change society in the next 100 years. AI is being harnessed to enable such things as home robots, robo-taxis and mental health chatbots to make you feel better. A startup is developing robots with AI that brings them closer to human level intelligence. Already, AI has been embedding itself in daily life — such as powering the brains of digital assistants Siri and Alexa. It lets consumers shop and search online more accurately and efficiently, among other tasks that people take for granted.

“AI is the new electricity,” said Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera and an adjunct Stanford professor who founded the Google Brain Deep Learning Project, in a keynote speech at the AI Frontiers conference that was held this past weekend in Silicon Valley. “About 100 years ago, electricity transformed every major industry. AI has advanced to the point where it has the power to transform” every major sector in coming years. And even though there’s a perception that AI was a fairly new development, it has actually been around for decades, he said. But it is taking off now because of the ability to scale data and computation. .... "

Predicting Power Outages

Researchers develop model to predict and prevent power outages using big data
Texas A&M Engineering News   by Shraddha Sankhe

Researchers at Texas A&M University have devised a predictive risk analysis framework that can forecast a potential vulnerability to utility assets and map out the location and time of a possible outage. The researchers say this feature enables the trees in the most critical areas with the highest risk to be felled first. "Dealing with aging infrastructure assets adds another layer of complexity that utility companies face," says Texas A&M professor Mladen Kezunovic. "Any kind of environmental data that has some relevance to the power system can be fed into this prediction framework." The model's applications can be tailored by feeding it data such as a utility company's operational records, weather forecasts, altitude, and foliage around the power systems. The team says they use the goals of the power system to select a large volume of input data from multiple sources and conduct a risk analysis, adding to the reliability of the system and its operations. ... "

Defending the Power Grid

Further applications to other kinds of monitored networks, IOT applications.

Detecting Cybersecurity Threats by Taking the Grid's Pulse   By Peter Fairley:    " .. DARPA teams are building grid defenses using phasor measurement units that combine GPS and power sensors ... " 

Powering Aircraft Systems

From the Bike Shop:   Smart Power:

" .... In addition to optimizing performance, efficiency and reliability in aircraft power systems, “GE Aviation is taking on a greater degree of system integration responsibility,” says Joe Krisciunas, engineering executive, GE Aviation – Electric Power Systems. “As aircraft become increasingly more electric, airframe manufacturers are looking to us to develop the entire electrical system from conception through modeling and simulation, to validation, qualification testing and eventually, certification.”

To build these complete end-to-end electrical power systems, GE Aviation created advanced manufacturing, simulation and physical integration facilities in Dayton, Ohio, and Cheltenham, England. The two virtually linked locations can design and test an entire aircraft electrical power generation and distribution system in the lab before it ever reaches the OEM’s factory floor. ... " 

Very interesting stories, facts, statistics and technologies feeding the aircraft systems of the future.