Pia Manz was born on 26 July 1990 in Bamberg.
After graduating from high school in 2009, she studied renewable energy technology at the University of Applied Sciences Nordhausen (B.Eng.) and completed a semester abroad at the University of Dundee, Scotland. In the subsequent master's degree in Systems Engineering (M.Eng.), she focused on electrical energy systems and was a research assistant at the Institute for Regenerative Energy Technology (in.RET) at the University of Applied Sciences Nordhausen. There she worked on a project on the degradation of photovoltaic modules and wrote her master thesis on "Modelling of ageing behaviour by PID in CIGS modules". Since 2017 she has been a research assistant and doctoral student at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) in Karlsruhe in the business unit demand analyses and projections.
"Effects of sector coupling technologies on the regional distribution of final energy demand"
The diffusion of sector coupling options and new technologies will structurally change energy demand in the future. Driven by the internationally agreed climate protection targets, fossil fuels must be replaced by climate-neutral energy sources in the demand sectors of industry, buildings and transport. The dissertation analyses the regional diffusion of new technologies and their effects on energy demand in the regions on a scenario basis. By developing a GIS-based model and coupling it with an energy system model, this question can be investigated. The aim of the dissertation is to answer the following research questions: How will the sector coupling technologies be distributed regionally in the future, taking into account the European climate protection goals? How does the regional structure of useful energy demand, technology structure and renewable energy potentials influence heat supply concepts and the diffusion of technologies with a focus on district heating and heat pumps? Are the bottom-up modeled technical and socio-economic potentials of decarbonisation technologies sufficient to achieve national greenhouse gas reductions by 2050? To what extent do regional potentials contribute to energy system transformation? The focus is on the consideration of regional structures such as industrial sites, building structure, income distribution, regional load management potentials and existing infrastructures such as district heating networks. Technologies of central importance for the decarbonisation of the demand sectors, i.e. the replacement of fossil fuels by climate-neutral energy sources, will be modelled bottom up for Germany taking into account the effects on the overall energy demand. The aim is the model-based identification of regional parameters for decarbonisation potentials in the regions and a scenario-based analysis of the development of the regional final energy demand.