Chiara Fusar Bassini on Understanding Data, Market Design, and Modeling Limits in Europe’s Energy Transition
🎯 In this episode: Chiara Fusar Bassini, PhD candidate at the Hertie School and former renewable energy consultant at enervis energy advisors GmbH, joins Net Zero Compare to discuss how data, market design, and modeling limits shape Europe’s energy transition.
The conversation explores a central challenge for energy-market analysis: the gap between how models assume electricity systems behave and how assets operate in reality. Drawing on her research using five years of hourly data from German gas power plants, Chiara explains that many conventional plants do not operate as flexibly as expected, even in systems with high renewable penetration. A key theme is the importance of operational data. While models often focus on technical parameters such as ramp rates, efficiency, or generation costs, real-world behavior can also be shaped by maintenance contracts, local agreements, asset longevity concerns, and commercial strategies. These hidden constraints can lead models to overestimate flexibility and underestimate the persistence of conventional generation. The episode also looks at market power in electricity markets and how regulatory design can influence pricing behavior. Chiara discusses how empirical data and simulation methods, including reinforcement learning, can help detect and study market power, while also highlighting differences between U.S. and European regulatory approaches. Data quality is another major focus. Chiara emphasizes that the energy sector does not lack data. Instead, the challenge lies in standardization, inconsistent identifiers, incomplete metadata, and the difficulty of merging datasets across markets and technologies. The discussion also clarifies where machine learning adds value in energy systems. It can support forecasting, pattern recognition, simulation, and control applications, but it does not replace established optimization methods used in dispatch, market clearing, grid-constrained planning, and long-term capacity modeling. Ultimately, the episode makes clear that better energy decisions require more than advanced models. They require clean data, realistic assumptions, domain knowledge, and a careful understanding of system-wide effects. As Europe’s energy transition becomes more complex, evidence-based market design and interdisciplinary skills will be essential.
🔗 Read the full article:
https://netzerocompare.com/podcasts/net-zero-compare-podcast/chiara-fusar-bassini-hertie-school [https://netzerocompare.com/podcasts/net-zero-compare-podcast/chiara-fusar-bassini-hertie-school]
📍 Guest: Chiara Fusar Bassini, PhD candidate at the Hertie School
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiara-fusar-bassini-b112bb156/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiara-fusar-bassini-b112bb156/]
🎙 Interview by: Karol Kaczmarek, Co-Founder of Net Zero Compare
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karol-kaczmarek-39a29651/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karol-kaczmarek-39a29651/]
#ChiaraFusarBassini #EnergyTransition #ElectricityMarkets #EnergyData #MachineLearning #MarketDesign #PowerMarkets #RenewableEnergy #EnergyModeling #NetZero #Sustainability #ClimateTech #Decarbonization #CleanEnergy
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