ENTSO-E has just published the Draft Scenarios Report for the Ten-Year Network Development Plans (TYNDPs) 2024 (https://2024.entsos-tyndp-scenarios.eu).

“Kalte Dunkelflaute” or just “Dunkelflaute” (German for “cold dark doldrums”) expresses a climate case, where in addition to a 2-week cold spell, variable electricity generation is low due to the lack of wind and sunlight.

In analyzing gas demand, ENTSO-E highlights the impact on power system operation and planning due to increased electrification, significant deployment of variable renewable energy sources, and climatic events.

According to ENTSO-E, as electrification increases, the seasonality of gas demand remains significant because the shift towards electrification for heating is offset by the increasing seasonality of electricity demand. Furthermore, as the energy system relies more on variable renewables, gas supply becomes sensitive to both climatic events and energy demand. This combined climatic sensitivity increases the need for flexibility. This is reflected in scenarios with higher winter power demand, especially during climatic events like Dunkelflaute, when gas demand for power generation rises to compensate for the absence of wind and solar energy over several days. ENTSO-E’s modeling results in the TYNDPs report show the impact of a Dunkelflaute event during the period of December 7-21 on the hourly generation dispatch as an area chart.

However, this type of area chart with many categories makes it difficult to see the time trends and contributions for smaller values. In these cases, it is better to use a trellis chart, a version of a small multiples chart that organizes the dimensions in the view across a grid. With just one line of code, the ggplot2 \(R\) package can transform an area plot into a trellis chart.