Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing SCAI
Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing SCAI

Network Evaluation Technologies

 

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Software

We offer software solutions for

  • Simulation, analysis, and planning of energy networks
  • Manipulation and analysis of energy distribution and transmission networks
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Offers

  • Research collaboration on energy transition and on resilience of energy infrastructure to extreme weather events
  • Tailored software development for the simulation of energy networks
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Projects

Approaches to tackle the challenges of the energy transition.

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The work of the Network Evaluation Technologies (NET) business area concentrates on

  • Network analysis, simulation, optimization, and planning for energy networks, including gas, electricity, heat, and water (heating and cooling) networks.
  • Sector coupling: integrating different energy consumption sectors, such as electricity, gas (hydrogen), and heat.
  • Cascading failures of intra-energy networks to simulate how a failure in one energy sector, such as the power grid, causes other interconnected sectors, such as gas networks, and vice versa.

NET’s cooperation partners and customers stem from areas such as oil and gas, chemistry, microelectronics, and engineering.

We develop mathematical methods and software products. Our range of services includes:

  • Studies
  • Licenses for our products
  • Tailored software solutions
  • Integration of our software modules into other software products

© Fraunhofer SCAI

Software

 

© Fraunhofer SCAI

In the News

 

Customer comments

 

"We have been using MYNTS productively for half a decade. The classical world of natural gas, hydrogen, and increasingly other media can be solved in a physically sophisticated model".

Open Grid Europe, network planning (2023)

Open Grid Europe



"MYNTS provides a valuable and comprehensive tool for mapping and calculating complex gas network infrastructures."

Bundesnetzagentur (2023)

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Efficient gas, electricity, and water transport networks are paramount in industrialized countries. To enable and expand the use of renewable energies, the German government supports the modernization and construction of thousands of kilometers of new power networks.

The new simulation software MYNTS (Multiphysical Network Simulator) helps to plan and operate such complex networks. For example, MYNTS can calculate how temperature fluctuations change the flow rates and how the failure of a sub-network affects the other network components.

The software is also of interest to SmartGrids. The intelligent networking and control of power generators, storage facilities, consumers, and network resources are among the most significant economic and environmental challenges. Local solutions can also make essential contributions: Improved time management and savings, especially for energy-intensive companies, could cut consumption peaks and bring electricity and gas consumption into line with supply. However, this increases complexity, costs, and susceptibility.

Applications arise from various areas, including but not limited to natural sciences, engineering, economics, or social issues. Some examples:

  • Networks: modeling, simulation, analysis/optimization in such areas as circuits, gas, water, energy, oil, etc.
  • Data analysis stemming from measurements for controlling gas or water transport networks, etc.
  • Network analysis/control for crisis management

Methods from different areas must be considered and further developed:

  • Networks and graphs: The business area develops and implements a framework for network simulation (MYNTS for electrical circuits, gas transport, etc.) and software for analyzing, manipulating, and matching networks and graphs (net'O'graph).
  • To allow for large-scale data analysis, algorithms and data transport and storage methods have to get the most out of modern system architectures. Depending on the application, technical computing and/or cloud computing play a decisive role.

 

2023    M. Anvari, et. al.
Perspectives on adaptive dynamical systems, Chaos 33, 071501.

2023    M. Anvari, et. al.,
A Framework for Synthetic Power System Dynamics, Chaos 33, 083120.  

2023    M. Anvari, et. al.
Protecting the Texas power grid from tropical cyclones: Increasing resilience by protecting critical lines, reprint arXiv:2301.13793.

2023    Mehrnaz Anvari, Anton Baldin, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina and Sabine Pott
Stability of dynamic fluid transport simulations, in Proc. of the 12th International Conference on Mathematical Modeling in Physical Sciences.

2023    Mehrnaz Anvari, Anton Baldin, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina and Sabine Pott
Simulation of pipeline transport of carbon dioxide with impurities, in Proc. of the 13th International Conference on Advanced Communications and Computation.

2023    Anton Baldin, Kläre Cassirer, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina, Sabine Pott
On Advanced Modeling of Compressors and Weighted Mix Iteration for Simulation of Gas Transport Networks; In: Wagner, G., Werner, F., Oren, T., De Rango, F. (eds) Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications. SIMULTECH 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 601, pp. 138-152. Springer, Cham 2023. 

2022    Anton Baldin, Kläre Cassirer, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina, Sabine Pott
Modeling and Sensitivity Analysis of Compressor Stations in Gas Transport Simulations; Int. J. On Advances in Systems and Measurements.

2022    Anton Baldin, Kläre Cassirer, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina, Sabine Pott
Solving Stationary Gas Transport Problems with Compressors of Piston and Generic Type, in Proc. of INFOCOMP 2022, International Conference on Advanced Communications and Computation.

2022    Anton Baldin, Kläre Cassirer, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina, Sabine Pott
Principal component analysis in gas transport simulation, in Proc. of SIMULTECH 2022, International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications.

2021    Baldin, Anton; Cassirer, K.; Clees, T.; Klaassen, B.; Nikitin, I.; Nikitina, L.; Pott, S.
AdvWarp: A Transformation Algorithm for Advanced Modeling of Gas Compressors and Drives; SIMULTECH 2021, 11th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications. Proceedings.

2021    Clees, Tanja; Baldin, Anton; Klaassen, Bernhard; Nikitina, Lialia; Nikitin, Igor; Spelten, Philipp
Efficient method for simulation of long-distance gas transport networks with large amounts of hydrogen injection; Energy conversion and management 234.

2021    Clees, Tanja; Baldin, Anton; Benner, Peter; Grundel, Sara; Himpe, Christian; Klaassen, Bernhard; Küsters, Ferdinand; Marheineke, Nicole; Nikitina, Lialia; Nikitin, Igor; Pade, Jonas; Stahl, Nadine; Strohm, Christian; Tischendorf, Caren; Wirsen, Andreas
MathEnergy - Mathematical Key Technologies for Evolving Energy Grids; Mathematical Modeling, Simulation and Optimization for Power Engineering and Management.

2020    Anton Baldin, Tanja Clees, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina
Topological Reduction of Stationary Network Problems: Example of Gas Transport; Int. J. On Advances in Systems and Measurements.

2019    Anton Baldin, Tanja Clees, Barbara Fuchs, Bernhard Klaassen, Igor Nikitin, Lialia Nikitina, Inna Torgovitskaia
Topological Reduction of Gas Transport Networks; Proc. of INFOCOMP 2019.

2018    Clees, Tanja; Nikitin, Igor; Nikitina, Lialia; Segiet, Lukasz
Modeling of gas compressors and hierarchical reduction for globally convergent stationary network solvers; International journal on advances in systems and measurements.

2018    Baldin, A.; Cassirer, K.; Clees, Tanja; Klaassen, B.; Nikitin, I.; Nikitina, L.; Torgovitskaia, I.
Universal translation algorithm for formulation of transport network problems; 8th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications.

2018    Clees, Tanja; Nikitin, Igor; Nikitina, Lialia
Making network solvers globally convergent; Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications. International Conference, SIMULTECH 2016.

2017    Clees, Tanja; Nikitin, Igor; Nikitina, Lialia
Advanced modeling of gas compressors for globally convergent stationary network solvers; Seventh International Conference on Advanced Communications and Computation, INFOCOMP 2017.

2017    Clees, Tanja; Hornung, Nils; Lluch, Eric; Nikitin, Igor; Nikitina, Lialia; Torgovitskaia, Inna
Cooling Circuit Simulation I: Modeling; Scientific Computing and Algorithms in Industrial Simulations.

2016    Clees, Tanja; Hornung, N.; Nikitin, I.; Nikitina, L.
A globally convergent method for generalized resistive systems and its application to stationary problems in gas transport networks; SIMULTECH 2016, 6th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications. Proceedings.

2016    Clees, Tanja; Cassirer, Kläre; Hornung, Nils; Klaassen, Bernhard; Nikitin, Igor; Nikitina, Lialia; Suter, Robin; Torgovitskaia, Inna
MYNTS: Multi-phYsics NeTwork Simulator; SIMULTECH 2016, 6th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications.

 

Scientists

Dr. Mehrnaz Anvari

Since January 2023, Mehrnaz Anvari has been head of the NET business area. Her research focuses on the analysis and modeling of renewable energies, i.e., wind and solar, alongside power grids from various perspectives.

Mehrnaz Anvari graduated from Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, with a Master´s in Physics in 2010. 2016, she received her Ph.D. from the ForWind Institute, University of Oldenburg in Germany. During her Ph.D., she was awarded the Georg-Christoph-Lichtenberg scholarship.
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Okan Akca (PhD)

Bekir Okan Akca completed both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Munich. Since May 2025, he has been working as a research associate at Fraunhofer SCAI. In this role, he focuses on gas network simulation and the automation of gas network operations, while also contributing as a project engineer to several projects in the context of German and European gas infrastructure. In parallel, he is pursuing a PhD at TU Berlin, where his research investigates software tools for gas network operation.

Dongrui Jiang

Dongrui Jiang is a research assistant at Fraunhofer SCAI in the Network Evaluation Technologies business area. Her work focuses on gas network simulation and optimization, with particular emphasis on machine-learning-based surrogate models for efficient energy network planning and simulation. As a PhD student at TU Berlin, she researches ML-supported methods and application-oriented case studies for these topics. She joined SCAI in November 2025 and has prior experience in this area.

Prabha Shankar

As a Mathematical/Numerical Scientist and Software Developer, Prabha Shankar develops and maintains the mathematical models, numerical algorithms, and computational methods underpinning the MYNTS numerical processing unit. He improves software efficiency through build system enhancements, manages software releases and documentation, conducts performance analysis and benchmarking, and provides technical support to customers. Prabha Shankar earned his Master's degree in Computational Science and Engineering from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2021 and has several years of experience in software development across industry and research institutions in Munich and Leipzig.

Students

Nazanin Arabi

Nazanin Arabi holds a Bachelor's degree in Software Engineering and is currently a Master's student in Computer Science at the University of Bonn. She has been working as a student assistant at SCAI since April 2025.

Erick Alejandro Madrigal Solis

Alumni

  • Dr. Lialia Nikitina
  • Dr. habil. Igor Nikitin
  • Finn Pittermann
  • Sabine Pott
  • Tobias Ohlinger

Close collaborations

Anton Baldin

Anton Baldin joined SCAI as a student. He finished his Master's studies in computer science in late 2018. Since graduating, he has been a software developer on the MYNTS project, working on efficient numerical algorithms, architecture, and GUI design while focusing on performance and software quality. In 2023, he started working for PLEdoc GmbH and still collaborates closely with SCAI.

Dr. Bernhard Klaassen

Dr. Bernhard Klaassen studied mathematics and computer science at TU Munich and Bonn University. After graduating with a diploma, he received a PhD from the University of Duisburg-Essen. From the start of the MYNTS project in 2011, he was part of the MYNTS development team and was head of the group until 2022. Now, he is with Fraunhofer IEG but still contributes to the MYNTS activities.