OPENING UP FOR A MORE COMPETITIVE ENERGY MARKET WITH NEW ENERGY SERVICES BY MAKING "REAL TIME" METERING DATA ACCESSIBLE TO MARKET PLAYERS

The development of competition and entry of new players in the Europe’s electricity retail market would be facilitated by the removal of existing barriers and the emergence of new services. Low cost access to the real time data in an open way will be a key element to foster the deployment of new services. Major Distribution System Operators (DSOs) are working together with market players and other stakeholders within the Horizon 2020 project FLEXICIENCY to develop a technical model to concretize the vision of data exchange based on meter data accessibility provided by DSOs close to real time. A common language will be openly set up in the project to address standardization and service accessibility for any actor willing to provide services and for that needing to exchange information. Standardized interfaces will be developed to integrate platforms of different players, becoming plug and play at EU level and allowing replicability of novel energy services. A virtual ICT environment will catalyze the interactions between relevant stakeholders and encourage a cross-country and cross-player access to innovative energy service based on metering data. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 646482

Cost-benefit analysis of Smart Grid projects: Isernia: Costs and benefits of Smart Grid pilot installations and scalability options

Smart Grid pilot projects and their assessment through a cost-benefit analysis are crucial to ensure that Smart Grid and Smart Metering roll-out are economically reasonable and cost-effective. Analysing the Isernia pilot project, the key result of the investigation is that an extra remuneration for such ambitious projects has been crucial in turning the Distribution System Operator’s Return on Investment (RoI) positive.JRC.C.3-Energy Security, Distribution and Market

Robust design of a sheet stamping process: approaches to control the inner process variability

The robustness investigation has become a crucial issue in the design of the sheet metal forming operations. The uncontrollable effects of some noise variables heavily influence the final process results, often evolving up to the failure of the process design. Therefore, tools able to handle such variability are worth developing with the aim to minimize the scattering of the investigated process performances despite of the process design. Moreover, the stamping process operations are usually characterized by objectives with conflicting behaviors and a set of compromise solutions, referred as Pareto front, is finally obtained instead of a global optimum. Therefore, the question becomes more about how the noise variables effects could influence the obtained Pareto solutions. And accordingly, which is the most robust operative window? In this paper, the stamping of the IFU Hishida part is designed by the calibration of the blank holder force, with the aim to minimize both thinning and wrinkling occurrences. Coil to coil variation of the material properties is accounted for. Two different robust approaches are applied on a multi-objective sheet stamping process design: a hybrid deterministic-stochastic approach and a stochastic framework. The former approach is based on a proper integration among Finite Element simulation, Response Surface Methodology and Monte Carlo simulation. A probability distribution of the final process performances is achieved and a robustness evaluation of an investigated Pareto solution is then performed. Within the second procedure, a Dual Response Surface approach is applied. The set of Pareto solutions is obtained under the influence of the material properties variation. A comparison between the two approaches is finally proposed in order to assess their capabilities in terms of robust design and variability investigation

Design of sheet stamping operations to control springback and thinning: a multi-objective stochastic optimization approach

The aim of this paper is to develop a design tool for stamping processes, which is able to deal with the scattering of the final part quality due to the inner variability of such operations. Such variability is one of the main drawbacks for a robust process design. It results in a scattering of the most significant process results and depends on several parameters. The so called noise factors greatly influence final result variability, which often means rejecting parts and anyway achieving final properties different from the specified ones. The process investigated in the paper is an S-shaped U-channel stamping operation carried out on a lightweight aluminum alloy of automotive interest. The main topic of the paper is the prevention of excessive part thinning and the control of springback phenomena; thus, thinning and springback are the objective functions taken into account. The blank holder force (BHF) value was considered as process design variable while two noise factors were considered: lubricating conditions (represented by the friction coefficient m) and strain-hardening index of the material (exponent n in material flow rule). The approach proposed in this paper is a multi-objective optimization problem consisting of an integration among finite element (FEM) numerical simulation, Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) method. The developed tool starts from a Pareto optimal solutions search technique and takes into account noise factors. The design procedure is able to foresee the potential direction along which a Pareto solution may move due to the effects of the noise factors. In this way, the proposed design tool is fully able to take into account process variability effects and to provide a precise overview of the possible perturbations the analyzed objective functions may undergo

Deep drawing versus incremental forming processes: a comparative cradle to gate analysis

The evaluation and reduction of the environmental impact of manufacturing processes have become a crucial issue in the last few years, addressing the interest of industrial and academic research towards greener solutions and technologies. Reducing input materials and energy requirements has become an imperative action in the industrial practice. As a matter of fact, strong is the concern on lightweight solutions and technologies for sheet stamping operations especially in the automotive sector. However, the knowledge on how impactful such processes are is still poor. In this paper, a comparison between a traditional deep drawing and an single point incremental forming process is investigated. Experimental tests and numerical simulations were carried out and two different approaches were compared to evaluate the processes environmental impact. The analysis revealed that, despite having higher energy consumptions, incremental forming processes result more eco-friendly than traditional stamping operations; in fact, the impact from the input material is the most critical one. A cradle to gate approach in the evaluation of forming technologies pointed out efficient material use strategies as priority in sheet forming processes