My research spans several areas (also see the projects page for ongoing and past research projects). Are you interested in working with me? The following overview provides guidance on the topics I can provide expertise on.
Large-scale energy system design. Designing future energy systems that can deal with and even thrive on the variability of solar and wind power requires models that can deal with the necessary spatial and temporal resolution. In a fully sector-coupled energy system where heat and transport are partially or fully electrified and synthetic fuels replace fossil ones, different strategies to balance renewable generation may be available: from continent-spanning electricity grids, to large-scale hydrogen storage, to demand response through heat electrification.
Weather-dependent variability. Understanding the variability of renewable energy at spatial scales ranging from individual buildings to entire continents, and at time scales ranging from minutes to decades. These efforts rely on links to meteorology and climate science, and on gathering crowdsourced measured data on solar and wind system performance from around the world. with Iain Staffell at Imperial College London, I develop one of the world’s leading suites of validated, decade-spanning, hourly power generation simulations, Renewables.ninja.
Energy-environment-society trade-offs. Climate change is not the only urgent global problem. The design of truly sustainable energy systems also requires examining trade-offs between the energy transition and other issues, such as land use, material requirements, ecosystem impacts, and ramifications for society. As part of efforts in this area, we develop deeper integration of our models with those from other fields, such as industrial ecology.
Research software development and model-based decision support. I am an experienced software developer for scientific and full stack web software. A particular focus of my group is to develop scientific models with direct relevance for decision support, for example, by combining carefully validated scientific models with easy-to-use web interfaces. We have considerable experience managing and leading the development of open-source scientific software across multiple institutions.