Congestion Management of the German Transmission Grid through Sector Coupling: A Modeling Approach

The progressive expansion of renewable energies, especially wind power plants being promoted in Germany as part of the energy transition, places new demands on the transmission grid. As an alternative to grid expansion, sector coupling of the gas and electricity sector through Power-to-Gas (PtG) technology is seen as a great opportunity to make the energy transmission more flexible and reliable in the future as well as make use of already existing gas infrastructure. In this paper, PtG plants are dimensioned and placed in a model of the German transmission grid. Time series based load flow calculations are performed allowing conclusions about the line loading for the exemplary year 2016.