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The transition towards a 100% fossil-free energy system, while achieving extreme penetration levels of intermittent wind and solar power in electricity generation, requires demand-side technologies that are smart (intermittency-friendly) and efficient. The integration of Smart Grid enabling technologies has been widely acknowledged by the industry and academia as the key to achieve a more reliable, efficient and secure grid. However, there is a lack of information about real flexibility with an active participation from customers. In this paper, we combine techno-economic model results with an empirical study in order to achieve a number of recommendations with respect to technology concepts and control strategies that would allow residential compression heat pumps to support large-scale integration of intermittent renewables. The analysis is based on data gathered over a period of up to 3 years period for 283 residential heat pumps installed and operating in Denmark. The results are used to assess the flexibility of domestic heat pumps and their ability to follow production.

In recent years there has been an increased focus on sustainable farming systems. This has led to an increase in the use of farm models built to assess the environmental impact from farming. In whole-farm models including crop production it is important to consider the rotation of crops, since this has a major impact on the consequences of the crop production. The problem considered in this paper is that of finding an optimal crop rotation for a given selection of crops on a given piece of land. It is shown that techniques from network modelling can be used to model this problem, which has the advantage that special algorithms for solving network problems can be developed and applied to solve the crop rotation problem. This can save computation time and make it tractable to implement crop rotation in whole-farm models.