Market architecture for TSO-DSO interaction in the context of European regulation

Following the overall European political goals, massive efforts were recently made to promote an accelerated integration of renewable energy sources (RES) in Europe, creating several operational challenges. One of the key approaches to resolve these is to help harness RESs in an efficient and cost-effective way is to utilise flexibility which can be provided by Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) which include active demand participation, energy storage and electric vehicles. The present paper is based on results and learnings of H2020 project SmartNet (2016-2019), where five coordination schemes for TSO-DSO interaction, necessary for procurement and activation of ancillary services were developed and comparatively evaluated. The paper discusses how different coordination schemes all have specific benefits and attention points related to operation of the TSO and DSO grids, other market participants involved and the market operation in general

Architectures for optimized interactions between TSOs and DSOs : experiences and learnings from SmartNet

Increased levels of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and their participation in provision of Ancillary Services (AS) at both transmission and distribution levels, call for a more advanced dispatching management of distribution networks to transform distribution from a “passive” into an “active” system. Moreover, new market architectures must be developed to enable participation of DERs in energy and AS markets. New operational and trading arrangements will also affect the interface between transmission and distribution networks, which will have to be managed in a coordinated manner between TSOs and DSOs in order to ensure the highest efficiency, effectiveness and security

Policy Recommendations to Implement and/or Overcome Barriers and Enable TSO-ISO Integration : D6.3

The present document gathers the most important guidelines deriving from the results and the experience of the SmartNet project, and thus is strongly dependent on the project assumptions (e.g. no clear separation between congestion management costs and balancing costs; the scenarios at the 2030 target year for the three studied countries; etc.). All the TSO-DSO coordination schemes that have been assessed within the SmartNet project imagine levels of DSO’s involvement in the System Operation and so of DSO’s responsibility by far larger than what happens today. Thus significant investments in monitoring and control systems are required, as well as a further development of expertise on DSO side (especially for what concerns smaller DSO). Additionally, the so called “fit-and-forget” reinforcement policy (oversizing of networks in order not to have to deal with network “problems”, mainly congestions, at the operation level) that nowadays is the basis of DN “operation” must be surpassed. These policies, in fact, could not unlikely lead some DSOs to underestimate flexibility as a value. As a consequence, the need to invest in implementing monitoring and control system could be undervalued, mainly during the first years, in which the DN monitoring systems have to be deployed and costs would probably overcome benefits

The Innovative FlexPlan Grid-Planning Methodology: How Storage and Flexible Resources Could Help in De-Bottlenecking the European System

The FlexPlan Horizon2020 project aims at establishing a new grid-planning methodology which considers the opportunity to introduce new storage and flexibility resources in electricity transmission and distribution grids as an alternative to building new grid elements, in accordance with the intentions of the Clean Energy for all Europeans regulatory package of the European Commission. FlexPlan creates a new innovative grid-planning tool whose ambition is to go beyond the state of the art of planning methodologies by including the following innovative features: assessment of the best planning strategy by analysing in one shot a high number of candidate expansion options provided by a pre-processor tool, simultaneous mid- and long-term planning assessment over three grid years (2030, 2040, 2050), incorporation of a full range of cost–benefit analysis criteria into the target function, integrated transmission distribution planning, embedded environmental analysis (air quality, carbon footprint, landscape constraints), probabilistic contingency methodologies in replacement of the traditional N-1 criterion, application of numerical decomposition techniques to reduce calculation efforts and analysis of variability of yearly renewable energy sources (RES) and load time series through a Monte Carlo process. Six regional cases covering nearly the whole European continent are developed in order to cast a view on grid planning in Europe till 2050. FlexPlan will end up formulating guidelines for regulators and planning offices of system operators by indicating to what extent system flexibility can contribute to reducing overall system costs (operational + investment) yet maintaining current system security levels and which regulatory provisions could foster such process. This paper provides a complete description of the modelling features of the planning tool and pre-processor and provides the first results of their application in small-scale scenariosThe research leading to these results/this publication received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 86381

Aggregation and Flexibility for Grids’ Operation: the EU Path Toward the Opening of the Ancillary Services Market to Distributed Energy Resources

The present paper proposes an analysis of EU policies related to the enabling of the Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) participation into the Ancillary Service Market (ASM). Indeed, the rising of renewables and DERs penetration in the power system recently called for the enlargement of the pool of actors that can actively participate in the grid balancing. Therefore, Europe, through directives and guidelines, is gradually fostering the involvement of DERs into the ASM. This paper firstly provides an overview of the regulations actually in place in the EU Member States concerning the participation of DERs into the energy markets. Then, a detailed analysis of the Italian framework is proposed. In the last years, Italy has undertaken a process aimed to increase the observability of DERs, through the installation of suitable monitoring and communication devices, and to enable the provision of ancillary services by dispersed units. The main features and the preliminary results of this process are analyzed and commented, highlighting the benefits and opportunities related to it

Development of the Stochastic Medium Term Market Simulation Model s-MTSIM

A large scale stochastic linear programming model, called s-MTSIM, has been developed to solve the unit commitment (UC) problem for power systems characterized by high levels of renewable energy sources penetration. Due to the high computational costs, mixed integer optimization is replaced by a two-step procedure: a continuous stochastic LP model and a heuristic calculation of UC. This work is part of a doctoral thesis and was carried out as a collaboration between RSE SpA and Università degli Studi di Bergamo. s-MTSIM model has been developed starting from an existing deterministic medium term power system simulator originally developed by RSE SpA

Market architecture for TSO-DSO interaction in the context of European regulation

Following the overall European political goals, massive efforts were recently made to promote an accelerated integration of renewable energy sources (RES) in Europe, creating several operational challenges. One of the key approaches to resolve these is to help harness RESs in an efficient and cost-effective way is to utilise flexibility which can be provided by Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) which include active demand participation, energy storage and electric vehicles. The present paper is based on results and learnings of H2020 project SmartNet (2016–2019), where five coordination schemes for TSO-DSO interaction, necessary for procurement and activation of ancillary services were developed and comparatively evaluated. The paper discusses how different coordination schemes all have specific benefits and attention points related to operation of the TSO and DSO grids, other market participants involved and the market operation in general.acceptedVersio

Regulatory Frameworks for Enabling Distributed Energy Resource Participation in Smart Grids

This chapter first briefly outlines a policy framework that has been shaping electricity industry and in particular latest developments that are enabling realisation of low-carbon electricity networks with high levels of renewable generation. It also outlines latest changes that are putting customers at the centre of energy transition, thereby affecting TSO and DSO operation, and opening a question of their better coordination, and thus a need for solutions proposed by and evaluated in the SmartNet project. This chapter also discusses changes that are necessary in the DSO operation to enable better DER integration and discusses results from implementation of five coordination schemes analysed in the SmartNet project. Finally, it discusses general issues that need to be considered when deciding on rules and regulation that will enable shift to systems that will require increased flexibility provided by different technologies and customers

Controllo di una rete di trasmissione di un bene di consumo

La presente invenzione riguarda il settore dell’elaborazione dati. Più specificamente, tale invenzione riguarda il controllo di reti di trasmissione

Market architecture for TSO-DSO interaction in the context of European regulation

Following the overall European political goals, massive efforts were recently made to promote an accelerated integration of renewable energy sources (RES) in Europe, creating several operational challenges. One of the key approaches to resolve these is to help harness RESs in an efficient and cost-effective way is to utilise flexibility which can be provided by Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) which include active demand participation, energy storage and electric vehicles. The present paper is based on results and learnings of H2020 project SmartNet (2016–2019), where five coordination schemes for TSO-DSO interaction, necessary for procurement and activation of ancillary services were developed and comparatively evaluated. The paper discusses how different coordination schemes all have specific benefits and attention points related to operation of the TSO and DSO grids, other market participants involved and the market operation in general