Hannes
 Weigt
 











 

 

Welcome

I'm Associate Professor for Energy Economics at the Faculty of Business and Economics (WWZ) of the University of Basel. In addition, I'm head of the Research Center for Sustainable Energy and Water Management (Forschungsstelle für Nachhaltige Energie-und Wasserversorgung, FoNEW) and Work Package Leader within the Competence Center for Research in Energy, Society and Transition (SCCER CREST).

My research interest lies in the model-based analysis of energy markets, in particular the future development of electricity markets and the interaction of environment, technology, economy and society.




Contact:
WWZ, Universität Basel Tel:    +41 (0)61 267 3259
Peter Merian-Weg 6 Mail:  hannes.weigt@unibas.ch
CH-4002 Basel


 
 
Latest Papers:

Hydropower Operation in a Changing Market Environment – A Swiss Case Study
Moritz Schillinger, Hannes Weigt, Michael Barry and René Schumann, available here

Abstract: Hydropower (HP) is expected to play an important role in the European energy transition by providing back-up and storage capacity as well as flexibility for intermittent renewable energies. However, due to low electricity market prices the profitability of HP decreased in recent years. In this paper, we analyze historic revenue potentials and future market prospects for HP taking into account different development paths. Using a short-term HP operation model to capture market opportunities as well as technical and natural constraints of HP plants, we model three representative Swiss HP plants. The results indicate that in the last years, balancing markets could have provided significant additional revenues for HP plants. However, accounting for uncertainties and market characteristics, the potential of balancing markets is reduced but cross-market optimization is still beneficial. Looking into the future, market price prospects for the coming decade are low to modest. Global fuel markets and the European Union Emissions Trading System (ETS) will be the main drivers for decisions for Swiss HP. The revenue potential from balancing markets will be reduced significantly in the future if all Swiss HP operators aim for balancing. While optimized operation across markets helps Swiss HP to increase its revenues, it is limited in scale.


Sensitivity of energy system investments to policy regulation changes: Application of the blue sky catastrophe
Anton Bondarev and Hannes Weigt, available here

Abstract: In this paper we argue, that the interaction of technology and economic policy regulations in the energy sector may be described by the so-called slow-fast class of dynamical systems. It is known that such systems may exhibit the blue sky catastrophe, a special type of bifurcation. Application of this result allows us to argue that caution is needed when updating economic policies in the energy sector to avoid the onset of catastrophic developments in the system's transformation, when energy system dynamics becomes unresponsive to policy updates.


Last Update: 09.02.2018