Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing SCAI
Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing SCAI

Network Evaluation Technologies

 

© Fotolia – tomas

Software

We offer software solutions for

  • Simulation, analysis, and planning of energy networks
  • Manipulation and analysis of energy distribution and transmission networks
More Info

Offers

  • Research collaboration on energy transition and on resilience of energy infrastructure to extreme weather events
  • Tailored software development for the simulation of energy networks
More Info

Projects

Approaches to tackle the challenges of the energy transition.

More Info

The work of the Network Evaluation Technologies (NET) business area concentrates on

  • Network analysis, simulation, optimization, and planning for energy networks, including gas, electricity, heat, and water (heating and cooling) networks.
  • Sector coupling: integrating different energy consumption sectors, such as electricity, gas (hydrogen), and heat.
  • Cascading failures of intra-energy networks to simulate how a failure in one energy sector, such as the power grid, causes other interconnected sectors, such as gas networks, and vice versa.

NET’s cooperation partners and customers stem from areas such as oil and gas, chemistry, microelectronics, and engineering.

We develop mathematical methods and software products. Our range of services includes:

  • Studies
  • Licenses for our products
  • Tailored software solutions
  • Integration of our software modules into other software products

Customer comments

"We have been using MYNTS productively for half a decade. The classical world of natural gas, hydrogen, and increasingly other media can be solved in a physically sophisticated model".

Open Grid Europe, network planning (2023)

Open Grid Europe 



"MYNTS provides a valuable and comprehensive tool for mapping and calculating complex gas network infrastructures."

Bundesnetzagentur (2023)

Expand all Close all

Efficient gas, electricity, and water transport networks are paramount in industrialized countries. To enable and expand the use of renewable energies, the German government supports the modernization and construction of thousands of kilometers of new power networks.

The new simulation software MYNTS (Multiphysical Network Simulator) helps to plan and operate such complex networks. For example, MYNTS can calculate how temperature fluctuations change the flow rates and how the failure of a sub-network affects the other network components.

The software is also of interest to SmartGrids. The intelligent networking and control of power generators, storage facilities, consumers, and network resources are among the most significant economic and environmental challenges. Local solutions can also make essential contributions: Improved time management and savings, especially for energy-intensive companies, could cut consumption peaks and bring electricity and gas consumption into line with supply. However, this increases complexity, costs, and susceptibility.

Applications arise from various areas, including but not limited to natural sciences, engineering, economics, or social issues. Some examples:

  • Networks: modeling, simulation, analysis/optimization in such areas as circuits, gas, water, energy, oil, etc.
  • Data analysis stemming from measurements for controlling gas or water transport networks, etc.
  • Network analysis/control for crisis management

Methods from different areas must be considered and further developed:

  • Networks and graphs: The business area develops and implements a framework for network simulation (MYNTS for electrical circuits, gas transport, etc.) and software for analyzing, manipulating, and matching networks and graphs (net'O'graph).
  • To allow for large-scale data analysis, algorithms and data transport and storage methods have to get the most out of modern system architectures. Depending on the application, technical computing and/or cloud computing play a decisive role.

 

2023    M. Anvari, et. al.
Perspectives on adaptive dynamical systems, Chaos 33, 071501.

2023    M. Anvari, et. al.,
A Framework for Synthetic Power System Dynamics, Chaos 33, 083120.  

2023    M. Anvari, et. al.
Protecting the Texas power grid from tropical cyclones: Increasing resilience by protecting critical lines, reprint arXiv:2301.13793.

2023    Mehrnaz Anvari, Anton Baldin, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina and Sabine Pott
Stability of dynamic fluid transport simulations, in Proc. of the 12th International Conference on Mathematical Modeling in Physical Sciences.

2023    Mehrnaz Anvari, Anton Baldin, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina and Sabine Pott
Simulation of pipeline transport of carbon dioxide with impurities, in Proc. of the 13th International Conference on Advanced Communications and Computation.

2023    Anton Baldin, Kläre Cassirer, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina, Sabine Pott
On Advanced Modeling of Compressors and Weighted Mix Iteration for Simulation of Gas Transport Networks; In: Wagner, G., Werner, F., Oren, T., De Rango, F. (eds) Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications. SIMULTECH 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 601, pp. 138-152. Springer, Cham 2023. 

2022    Anton Baldin, Kläre Cassirer, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina, Sabine Pott
Modeling and Sensitivity Analysis of Compressor Stations in Gas Transport Simulations; Int. J. On Advances in Systems and Measurements.

2022    Anton Baldin, Kläre Cassirer, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina, Sabine Pott
Solving Stationary Gas Transport Problems with Compressors of Piston and Generic Type, in Proc. of INFOCOMP 2022, International Conference on Advanced Communications and Computation.

2022    Anton Baldin, Kläre Cassirer, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina, Sabine Pott
Principal component analysis in gas transport simulation, in Proc. of SIMULTECH 2022, International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications.

2021    Baldin, Anton; Cassirer, K.; Clees, T.; Klaassen, B.; Nikitin, I.; Nikitina, L.; Pott, S.
AdvWarp: A Transformation Algorithm for Advanced Modeling of Gas Compressors and Drives; SIMULTECH 2021, 11th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications. Proceedings.

2021    Clees, Tanja; Baldin, Anton; Klaassen, Bernhard; Nikitina, Lialia; Nikitin, Igor; Spelten, Philipp
Efficient method for simulation of long-distance gas transport networks with large amounts of hydrogen injection; Energy conversion and management 234.

2021    Clees, Tanja; Baldin, Anton; Benner, Peter; Grundel, Sara; Himpe, Christian; Klaassen, Bernhard; Küsters, Ferdinand; Marheineke, Nicole; Nikitina, Lialia; Nikitin, Igor; Pade, Jonas; Stahl, Nadine; Strohm, Christian; Tischendorf, Caren; Wirsen, Andreas
MathEnergy - Mathematical Key Technologies for Evolving Energy Grids; Mathematical Modeling, Simulation and Optimization for Power Engineering and Management.

2020    Anton Baldin, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina
Topological Reduction of Stationary Network Problems: Example of Gas Transport; Int. J. On Advances in Systems and Measurements.

2019    Anton Baldin, Tanja Clees, Barbara Fuchs, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina, Inna Torgovitskaia
Topological Reduction of Gas Transport Networks; Proc. of INFOCOMP 2019.

2018    Clees, Tanja; Nikitin, Igor; Nikitina, Lialia; Segiet, Lukasz
Modeling of gas compressors and hierarchical reduction for globally convergent stationary network solvers; International journal on advances in systems and measurements.

2018    Baldin, A.; Cassirer, K.; Clees, Tanja; Klaassen, B.; Nikitin, I.; Nikitina, L.; Torgovitskaia, I.
Universal translation algorithm for formulation of transport network problems; 8th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications.

2018    Clees, Tanja; Nikitin, Igor; Nikitina, Lialia
Making network solvers globally convergent; Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications. International Conference, SIMULTECH 2016.

2017    Clees, Tanja; Nikitin, Igor; Nikitina, Lialia
Advanced modeling of gas compressors for globally convergent stationary network solvers; Seventh International Conference on Advanced Communications and Computation, INFOCOMP 2017.

2017    Clees, Tanja; Hornung, Nils; Lluch, Eric; Nikitin, Igor; Nikitina, Lialia; Torgovitskaia, Inna
Cooling Circuit Simulation I: Modeling; Scientific Computing and Algorithms in Industrial Simulations.

2016    Clees, Tanja; Hornung, N.; Nikitin, I.; Nikitina, L.
A globally convergent method for generalized resistive systems and its application to stationary problems in gas transport networks; SIMULTECH 2016, 6th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications. Proceedings.

2016    Clees, Tanja; Cassirer, Kläre; Hornung, Nils; Klaassen, Bernhard; Nikitin, Igor; Nikitina, Lialia; Suter, Robin; Torgovitskaia, Inna
MYNTS: Multi-phYsics NeTwork Simulator; SIMULTECH 2016, 6th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications.

 

Scientists

Dr. Mehrnaz Anvari

Since January 2023, Mehrnaz Anvari has been head of the NET business area. Her research focuses on the analysis and modeling of renewable energies, i.e., wind and solar, as well as on power grids from various aspects.

Mehrnaz Anvari graduated from Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, with a Master´s in Physics in 2010. 2016, she received her Ph.D. from the ForWind Institute, University of Oldenburg in Germany. During her Ph.D., she was awarded the George-Christoph-Lichtenberg scholarship.
More info


Dr. Lialia Nikitina

Lialia Nikitina is a senior scientist primarily focusing on software development. Her research interests include mathematical modeling, numerical simulation, data analysis, and multidimensional optimization.

Dr. habil. Igor Nikitin

The primary focus of senior scientist Igor Nikitin is on software development. His research interests include mathematical modeling, dynamical systems, numerical simulation, computer algebra, and differential equations.

Finn Pittermann

Bachelor student Finn Pittermann has been doing his apprenticeship at SCAI since 2020. He studies a dual study program at FH Aachen. Now, he qualifies as a Mathematical Technical Software Developer and works on the Software MYNTS.

Sabine Pott

Sabine Pott's main interests are mathematical structures. The mathematician's research focuses on numerical algorithms for power nets and simulates cascading failures in these nets.

PhD-Candidate

Tobias Ohlinger

Tobias Ohlinger completed his Master's degree in Computational Science in 2023 after completing his Bachelor's in Physics and has been working as a research associate at SCAI since 2024. His research focuses on the investigation of power grid resilience against weather-related cascading failures using machine learning.

Students

Manuel Lourenço

Manuel Lourenço completed his Bachelor's in Physics at the University of Bonn in 2023. The current Master's student has been working at SCAI since the end of 2023 and is working on models to control the dynamics of power grids.

Katarzyna Lyczek

Katarzyna Lyczek is currently studying for a Master's degree in mathematics at the University of Bonn. As part of her master's thesis, she is researching different architectures of graph neural networks and their applicability for predicting cascading effects in power grids.

Close collaborations

Anton Baldin

Anton Baldin joined SCAI as a student. He finished his Master's studies in computer science in late 2018. Since graduating, he has been a software developer on the MYNTS project, working on efficient numerical algorithms, architecture, and GUI design while focusing on performance and software quality. In 2023, he started working for PLEdoc GmbH and still collaborates closely with SCAI.

Dr. Bernhard Klaassen

Dr. Bernhard Klaassen studied mathematics and computer science at TU Munich and Bonn University. After graduating with a diploma, he received a PhD from the University of Duisburg-Essen. From the start of the MYNTS project in 2011, he was part of the MYNTS development team and was head of the group until 2022. Now, he is with Fraunhofer IEG but still contributes to the MYNTS activities.