Atmos

Last November I started with my first research project about the possibilities for application of hydrogen storage in the Netherlands. From what I learned about renewable energy generation and (future) energy demand, I think it is crucial to find a good way of storing and transporting energy. Storing energy in the form of hydrogen seems to be one of the few options to do this. When I heard that Frank Pierie, my supervisor, had a research topic available concerning hydrogen I thought this could be interesting enough to dedicate 7 months of my life to. After a short meeting where he explained his ideas to me, I started searching for and reading related articles to build up some background knowledge. Searching for and reading articles is personally not my favorite occupation, so I didn’t really enjoy this part. During the process I started writing down questions that came to my mind, that could be interesting to investigate. I discussed those with Frank and step by step we came to a clearer vision of what my project could cover. Writing a research proposal and processing feedback almost killed me, but eventually I got through it. Since now I finally can work on the actual research, my joy for life is slowly coming back to me. My daily occupation at the moment is building a model in Excel to simulate a very simplified version of the Dutch energy system. Together with a fellow student who is using the same modelling method, I work on building Excel sheets representing energy demand, generation technologies, conversion technologies and energy storage. By using different sets of technologies and merit orders, scenarios can be built to represent possible future situations and explore possibilities and limitations. I think my background in physics is helping me to understand what is happening inside the model, and how I can add information to it myself. Different EES courses involved modelling in Excel, and this experience is helping me as well. I’m not really looking forward to the part of my research where I have to search for data again, but in the end I hope that the interesting topic will keep me motivated enough. And I can always count on the support of the other suffering students during coffee and lunch breaks. If they got through it, I can too!