Publications
F. Lopez Aguilar, D. Lauinger, F. Vuille, D.B. Müller, Nature Communications, 2024. Featured in Anthropocene Magazine.
Summary: Based on dynamic material flow analysis, we show that equipping around 50% of electric vehicles with vehicle-to-grid or reusing 40% of electric vehicle batteries for second life each have the potential to fully cover the European Union’s need for stationary storage by 2040. This could reduce total primary material demand from 2020–2050 by up to 7.5% and 1.5%, respectively, which could ease geopolitical risks and increase the European Union’s energy and material security.
Reliable frequency regulation through vehicle-to-grid: Encoding legislation with robust constraints
D. Lauinger, F. Vuille, D. Kuhn, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 2024. INFORMS ENRE 2022 Best Student Paper Award.
Summary: We formulate a robust optimization problem that maximizes a vehicle owner’s expected profit from selling primary frequency regulation and guarantees that market commitments are met at all times for all frequency deviation trajectories in a functional uncertainty set that encodes applicable legislation. Faithfully modeling the energy conversion losses during battery charging and discharging renders this optimization problem nonconvex. By exploiting a total unimodularity property of the uncertainty set and an exact linear decision rule reformulation, we prove that this nonconvex robust optimization problem with functional uncertainties is equivalent to a tractable linear program. We find that the prevailing penalties for nondelivery of promised regulation power are too low to incentivize vehicle owners to honor the delivery guarantees given to grid operators.
Frequency regulation with storage: On losses and profits
D. Lauinger, F. Vuille, D. Kuhn, European Journal of Operational Research, 2024.
Summary: Because of charging and discharging inefficiencies, storage operators lose energy on average when providing frequency regulation. We express the loss as an implicit function of the regulation power and show that it is decreasing in roundtrip efficiency and increasing in frequency dispersion. We find that the profits from frequency regulation over the lifetime of energy-constrained storage devices are roughly inversely proportional to the length of time for which regulation power must be committed.
Vehicle-to-Grid for Reliable Frequency Regulation
D. Lauinger, PhD Thesis, 2022. EPFL Thesis distinction award.
A general framework for stock dynamics of populations and built and natural environments
D. Lauinger, R.G. Billy, F. Vásquez, D.B. Müller, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2021.
Summary: We develop a general mathematical framework for dynamic stock models. We use the framework to classify a variety of stock models from different disciplines and discuss their applicability. The framework provides a common language for the interdisciplinary analysis of coupled human–environment systems.
E. Clédat, D. Lauinger, Revue XYZ, 2018. Featured on Swiss national television.
Summary: The Swiss Train Challenge is to set foot in all 26 cantons of Switzerland in as little time as possible, using only public transportation. Relying on human intuition informed by a geographical information system to select the relevant train stations, and on computational power to solve the resulting mixed-integer linear optimization problem, we found a solution that beats the current record of 17 hours and 19 minutes, by 25 minutes. When testing our itinerary in practice, we made all connections but one for which the arriving train was 20 minutes delayed, a rare event in Switzerland. This is the first time that an algorithm has been used to calculate the Swiss Train Challenge itinerary.
S. Majerus, D. Lauinger, J. Van Herle, Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage, 2018.
Summary: Solid oxide fuel cells are considered as a more efficient alternative for valorizing agricultural-derived biogas, which, at the moment, is vastly done with cheaper conventional engines. After an analysis of the economic merits, target farm sizes are recommended for each country. The low valorization of manure-derived biogas in Europe offers a big opportunity for the commercialization of solid oxide fuel cells and for a push toward mass production.
Cost requirements for a small-scale SOFC fed from agricultural biogas
S. Majerus, D. Lauinger, J. Van Herle, Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage, 2017.
Summary: To date, less than 5% of the Swiss agricultural biogas potential is used. It is possible to increase this value up to 86% through the deployment of 2kWel engines. The small size of the Swiss farm requires biogas installations in the kW-range. Small-scale biogas facilities are not profitable yet: The main challenge is to bring down the lifetime cost of the fuel cells to 11,000 CHF/kWel (considering a lifetime of ten years) and to reduce the investment cost of small-scale biogas facilities to around 9500 CHF/kWch. In the kW-range, solid oxide fuel cells have higher electrical conversion efficiencies than internal combustion engines. We find that SOFCs become competitive over combustion engines if their investment cost decreases to below 13,000 CHF/kWel for an 11 year lifetime.
A review of the state of research on vehicle-to-grid (V2G): Progress and barriers to deployment
D. Lauinger, F. Vuille, D. Kuhn, European Battery, Hybrid and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Congress, 2017.
Summary: Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) could lower the need for stationary distributed storage by capitalizing on the existing batteries of EVs that are parked most of the time. Given this apparent benefit, it may appear surprising that the V2G technology has not yet been deployed in a wider scale. To investigate this discrepancy, we review the status of research on V2G and the status of technical development and deployment. We assess the barriers to V2G deployment by identifying the main open research questions from a technical and economic point of view.
A linear programming approach to the optimization of residential energy systems
D. Lauinger, P. Caliandro, J. Van Herle, D. Kuhn, Journal of Energy Storage, 2016. Received a 10,000 CHF start-up grant for commercialization.
Summary: A decision-support tool in the form of a linear program is developed to determine the optimal investment and operating decisions for residential energy systems. It shows how energy conversion units such as a cogeneration fuel cell, a heat pump, a boiler, photovoltaic panels and solar thermal collectors can be combined with energy storage devices, consisting of a battery and a hot water tank, to drive down total yearly energy costs and CO2 emissions while meeting space heat, hot water and electricity needs.
The Economy of Azerbaijan: Oil and Gas
D. Lauinger, L. Stadler, T. Vuillemin, In T. Brunner, N. Hayoz, C.R. Famos (Eds.), States and Societies in Transition – History, Threats and Opportunities. The Case of Georgia and Azerbaijan (pp. 25–32), 2016.
Summary: Oil and gas play an indispensable role in Azerbaijan’s economy, its political system, and its foreign policy. However, as a result of its overwhelming dependence on these resources and their predicted depletion in the near future, the country’s political and economic systems are in desperate need of reorientation. The reason why the latter has so far failed to manifest itself is because a select few stand to benefit disproportionately from the status quo, a status quo which is rapidly approaching its expiration date.