Evolution of Integrated Multi-Energy Vector System and Innovation Opportunities

Increasing energy demands and visibly changing climatic conditions have led to various deliberations to look at and mitigate the effects causing this adversity. The Paris agreement received greater attention from major countries aiming to decarbonize energy systems and adopt more Renewable Energy Sources (RES). In this regard, India is already ahead of its ambitious targets in increasing its RES installation capacity. However, given the nature of these RES, it has increased the challenges in power systems and questioned the prime component of energy trilemma which is the security of supply. These challenges need to be addressed to avoid failures; one way is to exploit the various synergies between different energy systems. This can reduce carbon emission and increase the renewable penetration in the energy system and meet the requirements of the changing energy sector. This can be facilitated using Multi Energy Systems (MES). These systems optimally interact with each other at different levels and can increase the overall technical, economic, and environmental performance relative to existing energy systems which are planned and operated independently or separately. This paper discusses the overview of MES concepts, key components, opportunities in the Indian perspective, challenges, Energy markets and enumerates a few future works in this direction.