Lunch talks

Find out about the next talks as part of Series IV: Technologies and Infrastructure
under upcoming events

Series IV: Technologies and Infrastructure 

13.11.2024

Lunch talk series IV: Optimal design and operation of seasonal thermal energy storage systems

On Tuesday, 12 November 2024 Jacopo Vivian from University of Padua (formerly from Empa) presented how to optimize the performance of seasonal thermal energy systems, focusing on borehole thermal energy storage (BTES) and ice storage.

  • Presentation (PDF, 2.9 MB) 
  • Presentation recording on the PATHFNDR YouTube channel 

18.10.2024

Lunch talk series IV: Design of sites for synthetic methane production with direct air capture

On Wednesday, 16 October 2024 Gabriele Humbert from Empa discussed the optimal configuration of synthetic methane production sites with integrated direct air capture technologies and highlighted the key cost factors to be reduced.

  • Presentation (PDF, 5.0 MB)
  • Presentation recording on the PATHFNDR YouTube channel 

27.09.2024

Lunch talk series IV: Exploring EV charging patterns, flexibility potential and grid impacts

On Thursday, 25 September 2024, Maria Parajeles Herrera from ETH Zurich, Federica Bellizio from Empa, and Siobhan Powell from ETH Zurich gave an overview of EV charging behaviours, their flexibility potentials, and the consequential impacts on the electrical grid.

19.07.2024

Lunch talk series IV: Hydrogen technologies – salt cavern storage

On Thursday, 18 July 2024, Pascal Häfliger from PSI talked about the assessment of potential salt cavern sites for bulk-hydrogen-energy storage in Switzerland. 

01.07.2024

Lunch talk series IV: Current trends in PV deployment and technology

On Friday, 28 June 2024, Natasa Vulic from Empa discussed the current trends in PV technology and deployment, spurred by recent news stories on the exponential growth of solar power.

28.05.2024

Lunch talk series IV: Impact and challenges of long-term thermal storage 

On Tuesday, 28 May 2024, Jörg Worlitschek from HSLU gave an overview of the most important research questions and findings on the technical and socio-political aspects of long-term thermal storage.

16.04.2024

Lunch talk series IV: Integration of wind power in the energy system with different energy vectors

On Monday, 15 April 2024, Barton Chen from Empa provided insights into the dynamics of wind power and its integration into the energy system using different vectors such as electricity, hydrogen and synthetic fuels.

17.03.2024

Lunch talk series IV: Flexibility provision in an integrated power, methane & hydrogen infrastructure

On Wednesday, 13 March 2024, Behnam Akbari from ETH Zurich presented the provision of flexibility in an integrated power, methane and hydrogen infrastructure under various energy trading scenarios.

07.01.2024

Lunch talk series IV: High-Temperature Heat Pumps

On Tuesday, 6 February 2024, Dennis Roskosch from ETH Zurich and Leon Brendel from OST (Ostschweizer Fachhochschule) presented the potential of highly efficient high-temperature heat pumps, which was explored using computer simulations and on-site studies. 

Series III: Policies and Business Strategies

21.03.2023

Lunch talk series III: An overview of EU policies accelerating carbon capture and utilization

On Tuesday, 21 February 2023, Christian Moretti from ETH Zurich presented an overview of the current policy context shaping the development of carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) and future EU policies aiming at accelerating it.

17.02.2023

Lunch talk series III: With shield and lance – How Tesla scaled EVs

On Tuesday, 17 January 2023, Lucas Miehé from ETH Zurich presented how firms can use market and non-market strategies to scale sustainable innovations. The author team developed a model how firms can use four strategies to scale sustainable innovation. 

21.11.2022

Lunch talk series III: Informed citizen panels on the Swiss electricity future

On Monday, 21 November 2022, Prof. Evelina Trutnevyte from UNIGE presented results of informed citizen panels that have been established in Zurich and Geneva to provide citizen views on the Swiss electricity supply. The citizen views challenge the types of Swiss electricity supply scenarios that have been modelled and analysed so far.

06.12.2022

Lunch talk series III: Carbon taxes and other zombies

On Tuesday, 06 December 2022, Prof. Anthony Patt from ETH Zurich presented the challenges and opportunities of carbon taxes. First, he described its fit (or lack thereof) to the primary challenge – transformation of socio-technical systems – that climate change imposes. Second, he described the empirical evidence on effectiveness (or lack thereof). Third, he proposed ideas about why the idea persists, despite its failure at both theoretical and empirical levels. 

Series II: Demonstrators

31.03.2022

Lunch talk series II: ESI platform

On Thursday, 31 March 2022, Christian Peter from PSI presented the Energy System Integration (ESI) platform, a physical experimental demonstrator for testing the technical feasibility of different processes and methods.

 
 

03.03.2022

Lunch talk series II: Ehub platform

On Thursday, 03 March 2022, Philipp Heer from Empa presented the Ehub platform, a virtualised environment that manages the data flow of the Empa-NEST and -move demonstrators and enables energy management, building control and real-time sector coupling. 

 

03.02.2022

Lunch talk series II: EPFL Smart Grid 

On Thursday, 03 February 2022, Prof. Mario Paolone from EPFL presented the Smart Grid demonstrator, an infrastructure for experimental validation of technologies to be deployed on a large scale for situational awareness and control of power distribution systems.

Series I: Models / Tools

28.10.2021

Lunch talk series I: EXPANSE model

On Thursday, 28 October 2021, Prof. Evelina Trutnevyte from UNIGE presented EXPANSE, a model for assessing cost-optimal and near-optimal energy scenarios. 
 

07.10.2021

Lunch talk series I: CESAR-P tool

On Thursday, 7 October 2021, Kristina Orehounig from Empa presented CESAR-P, a tool for assessing the energy demand of buildings and even entire cities with EnergyPlus as the simulation core.
 

23.09.2021

Lunch talk series I: SecMOD model

On Thursday, 23 September 2021, David Shu from ETH Zurich and Christiane Reinert from RWTH Aachen presented SecMOD, a model for the optimisation and life-cycle assessment of sector-coupled energy systems.
 

08.07.2021

Lunch talk series: Calliope tool

On Thursday, 8 July 2021, Prof. Stefan Pfenninger from TU Delft presented Calliope, an open-source tool for modelling energy systems from urban districts to entire continents.

02.07.2021

Lunch talk series I: Ehub tool

On Thursday, 1 July 2021, Andrew Bollinger from Empa presented Ehub, a tool for planning optimised energy supply solutions for buildings and districts. The spinoff Sympheny, a web application, was also demonstrated.

10.06.2021

Lunch talk series I: ReMaP platform

On Thursday, 27 May 2021, Gianfranco Guidati from ETH Zurich presented ReMaP, platform for developing and validating new control concepts and components in a seamless process from a pure software environment – the Simulation framework (SFW) – to a hardware environment – the Control framework (CFW). 

10.06.2021

Lunch talk series I: Nexus-e tool 

On Wednesday, 12 May 2021, Marius Schwarz from ETH Zurich presented Nexus-e, a tool for modelling interconnected energy systems.

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