The Energy Strategy and Environmental Effects (E-SEE) research group is composed of researchers with a diverse professional background (electrical engineer, energy engineer, architect, meteorologist, physicist, geographer) adapted to the diversity of basic and applied research questions in interdisciplinary energy, working in 5 research focus areas: power system security, electric power systems, energy meteorology and climatology, energy statistics, building and urban energy.

Team members:

Bálint Hartmann, PhD

Viktória Sugár, PhD

Veronika Oláhné Groma, PhD

Endre Börcsök, PhD

Bálint Sinkovics

Tamás Soha

Lilla Barancsuk

Milán Sőrés

Contact: hartmann.balint@ek-cer.hu

Power system security

Research in the focus area of power system security covers power system stability issues (decrease of system inertia, cascade outages, coupled synchronous oscillators), improvements to support resilience, protection against disturbances caused by disruptions or deliberate attacks, and an infrastructure-centric, complex systems approach to the energy strategy. Primary task of the focus area is to determine the roots of fault tolerance in power systems using the disciplines of power engineering, network science and geoinformatics.

Ongoing projects: The focus area participates in the two-year research project ELKH SA-44/2021 “Renewable based power system stability”, where the effects of the spread of renewable energy on the stability of power systems are investigated using basic model calculations and learning algorithms.

Electric power systems

The primary tasks of the electric power system focus area include computer modelling of the power system and its components, the study of the system integration of renewable energy sources, application perspectives of energy storage technologies, and the maximisation of local energy use. The work of the focus area is supported by a test laboratory to study battery lifetime characteristics.

Ongoing projects:

The focus area participates in the research and development project 2021-2.1.1-EK-2021-00002 “Tesseract Energy Storage”, in which will the first NaS battery of Hungary will be installed on the premises of the Centre for Energy Research.

Energy meteorology and climatology

With the proliferation of solar panels, accurate short-term photovoltaic generation forecasting is essential to ensure grid security and service quality. The members of energy meteorology and climatology group aim to develop an ultra-short term (up to one hour) solar PV power output estimation method that can accurately forecast the expected global irradiance and photovoltaic energy production.
Since PV production is mainly influenced by cloud cover, which is highly variable, the development of this method is challenging. For the estimation, cloud cover images are analysed using several methodologies, including traditional image processing-based techniques as well as state-of-the-art data-driven technologies and neural networks. A wide-angle sky camera and an associated weather station are available on site for the analyses.

Ongoing projects:

2020-3.1.4-ZFR-EKM – Implementation of a pilot project to support the development and operation of energy communities in Berkenye village.

Energy statistics

An important objective of the European Union is to accelerate the phase-out of carbon intensive electricity generation technologies. Many Member States are approaching this very ambitious target by using an extremely high weather-dependent renewable share of resource allocation. In countries where renewable potential is scarce or where diversification of sources is seen as a priority, nuclear energy could play an important role. The energy statistics research team is carrying out a full-scale modelling of potential power generation alternatives, including the energy storage capacities needed for system management, on a national and European scale. The ideal resource allocation is achieved through multi-objective optimisation where decision criteria can be tuned country by country and statistical analysis of the results is feasible

Ongoing projects:

Since 2021 we participate in the EUROfusion-WPSES project (EUROfusion Consortium under Horizon 2020 Grant Agreement No.633053 – Eurofusion) as part of an international team to develop long-term energy scenarios.