Preface

During the past years and the writing of this dissertation, I have greatly benefited from the support of numerous people. I would like to start my thesis by thanking them. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Lucas Bretschger for giving me the opportunity to write this thesis, and for his continuous encouragement and his professional advice. I am also grateful to my co-supervisor Prof. Hans Gersbach for his interest in the topic and his helpful inputs, and to Prof. Thomas Rutherford for many valuable comments. Two chapters of this thesis were written during a long-term project in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Office of Energy. I thank Nicole Mathys, Matthias Gysler and Lukas Gutzwiller for their valuable inputs and their kind support. Frank Vöhringer has been a huge help in programming the simulation model, and I am very thankful for his active participation in this project and his availability for answering countless questions. Finally, a big thank you goes to Florentine Schwark for the pleasant collaboration and for the numerous talks and discussions. I would also like to thank the whole RESEC group for all the legendary events an