Scheduled on the margins of the G20 Energy Transitions Ministerial Meeting (ETMM), this year’s Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) and Mission Innovation (MI) meetings will bring together, governments, international organizations, private sector, academia, innovators, civil society, and early career researchers and policymakers over a four-day program featuring high-level ministerial dialogues, global initiative launches, award announcements, minister-CEO roundtables, and a wide array of side-events cutting across diverse themes of clean energy transition. CEM14/MI8 will also feature a public facing technology showcase demonstrating cutting edge advances in clean energy from India and around the world.

ISGAN will organize several events during the meeting:

CEM ISGAN – MI GPFM collaboration for power system transformation, with special focus on policy and private sector engagement

Description

Power systems transformation is a core pillar of net zero transitions and a key CEM-MI focus.
The event will showcase the collaboration between ISGAN and the GPFM following to the MoU signature at CEM13/MI-7 in Pittsburgh. The event will also represent a great opportunity to explore effective ways to drive the public-private sector engagement, as well as to underline the commitment of private sector stakeholders on the ISGAN and GPFM activities. The GPFM will showcase its innovation strategy and Flagship Projects’ activities, while ISGAN will present its last outcomes and will release the KSP workshop/Inter-Working Groups reports. The event will also bring together Minister-level/Senior Officials and CEOs/CTOs in a collaborative environment to express their thoughts, opinions, and perspectives for advancing private sector engagement.
The outcomes from this side event are meant to bolster GPFM and ISGAN collaboration supporting the flexibility of the power market and digitalization of the electricity grid.

CEM-MI collaboration for technology innovation and implementation, policy, and regulatory actions to rapidly decarbonize power systems

Description

The event will showcase collaboration among ISGAN, 21CPP, GPFM, and RD20, as well as the challenges towards power system decarbonization. It will include 1 keynote/scene setting presentation by IEA or IRENA. ISGAN, 21CPP, GPFM, and RD20 will showcase their synergy and innovation strategy, main activities, and related outcomes. A high-level Roundtable on power will be held, addressing implementation, technology innovation, and policy and regulatory actions to rapidly decarbonize power systems. Concluding remarks/key recommendations will be provided by 21CPP and/or ISGAN and/or GPFM and/or RD20 Leads.

Friday 21^st July, 17:30 to 18:30, Ballroom 1

Each year, the ISGAN awards recognize the innovation, integration, and transformation of smart grid systems and policy. This year, we recognize projects that demonstrated excellence in the application of Artificial Intelligence in the electricity sector. The winners and honorees represent a range of fascinating AI applications that include detecting and diagnosing future incidents in the grid, developing and validating virtual power plants to support peer-to-peer market participation, improving the financial and operational efficiency of distribution system operators, and forecasting for distributed energy resources (DERs).

Stay tuned for our announcements, interviews, and webinars with the winners of this year’s awards.

The ongoing energy transition brings about profound changes to electricity generation, transmission, and consumption. As societies strive for zero carbon emissions and increasingly rely on electrification, substantial investments must be made to upgrade and expand electricity grids. This includes adopting new digital smart grid technologies. In this era of rapid grid infrastructure transformation, efficient, transparent, and sustainable planning processes aligned with the UN Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are crucial.

Recognizing the importance of effective grid planning processes for building sustainable electricity grids, ISGAN has undertaken the knowledge sharing project (KSP) titled “Network Planning Under Uncertainty” from September 2022 to July 2023. This project brought together a group of experts and practitioners from 12 countries, along with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), to exchange knowledge and collaboratively develop policy guidance that supports the establishment of robust network planning practices worldwide.

Throughout the project, representatives from transmission and distribution system operators, policymakers, and research institutions engaged in a structured and highly interactive process. They focused on identifying some of the root causes and consequences of various types of uncertainties and complexities in the grid planning process. With the Sustainable Development Goals as the guiding framework, the project then identified key objectives and success factors aimed to address barriers and bottlenecks in network planning.

A significant outcome of the Network Planning Under Uncertainty project is a Policy Brief that serves as a guiding document for policymakers and stakeholders in the sector. This Policy Brief provides actionable recommendations to develop future-proof planning processes, including effective management of uncertainties and complexities inherent in electricity infrastructure.

By leveraging the collective expertise and experiences of diverse stakeholders, the ISGAN Policy Brief offers guidance for policymakers and sector stakeholders to navigate the complexities of grid planning, paving the way for resilient, sustainable, and future-ready electricity infrastructure.

For further information on the Network Planning Under Uncertainty project, please contact:

• Helena Lindquist, ISGAN Communication Working Group, Task 3: Structured Knowledge Exchange
• Susanne Ackeby, ISGAN Working Group 6, Power Transmission & Distribution Systems

Cross-border power flow capacities are identified as key enablers of market integration in Europe, and thus one of the main facilitators of the integration of renewable energy. Horizon2020 projects FARCROSS and TRINITY aims to enhance the cross-border capacities in the South-Eeastern European region, using optimalization solutions and grid enhancing technologies.

Once registered, please check your email inbox and ensure that the invitation email is not marked as spam. Please add “isgan@comillas.edu” and “newsletter@iea-isgan.org” to your email whitelist.

Intended audience

– Policy makers (regional, EU)
– Other Horizon project consortiums
– TSOs
– Other experts in the smart energy domain

Key messages

1) Cross – border power transmission connections in the SEE countries typically suffer from congestion, lack of contingency and market inconsistencies. At the same time, the available RES aren’t injected to the transmission corridors in a cost – effective and secure way, making the need for transmission asset upgrade vital.

2) The 2 projects – FARCROSS and TRINITY – are developing and testing solutions with a different approach. On a software level, T – SENTINEL (TRINITY) remedies grid overloading conditions,. On a hardware level, among other solutions, SmartValves (FARCROSS) are introduced as a means to divert power flows from congested lines. The utilization of both technologies can be expected to offer significant improvements in terms of flexibility, making the cross-border connections more robust and adaptive to the evolution of the electrical power industry.

Further information

https://farcross.eu/

https://trinityh2020.eu/

Once registered, please check your email inbox and ensure that the invitation email is not marked as spam. Please add “isgan@comillas.edu” and “newsletter@iea-isgan.org” to your email whitelist.

The annual ISGAN Awards of Excellence recognize excellence in smart grid projects around the world. At the 8th Award competition, ISGAN honored excellence on the theme: “EV Integration in Smart Grid,” in partnership with the Global Smart Energy Federation (GSEF).

The honorees will share project highlights that can be adapted or adopted in other markets and regions. By showcasing exemplars in the global smart grid community, the event will promote exchange of lessons learned and emerging best practice, as well as the creation of a shared understanding of the value that smarter, more flexible electricity systems can bring.

Speakers

KiJun Park (Korea Electric Power Corporation)
Baerte De Brey (STEDIN)

Intended audience

Policy makers, Junior / Senior engineers / Students

Key messages

In most low-carbon scenarios, electric vehicle (EV) integration is a critical vector for decarbonization of transport. However, effective EV integration presents a variety of high-stakes, technical challenges for electricity network operators that must be resolved for that promise to be realized at a speed and scale consistent with global climate and clean energy objectives. EV charging is a considerable load on the electric grid that can impact the power quality. This webinar would draw your attention to the role that smart grids play for making EV integration possible.

Further information

ISGAN Award 2022 – Excellence of EV Integration in Smart Grid

ISGAN welcomes its new Vice-Chair Wickie Lassen Agdal, delegate from Denmark. Wickie has been programme manager with the Danish Energy Agency since 2017 and has been the national delegate for Denmark in ISGAN since 2019. Wickie says that she embraces her new role as ISGAN Vice Chair as the experience in the ExCo so far has been very enlightening – Her hope is to get more involved, and she will contribute with her knowledge about the topic of Smart Grids and the electricity system. Apart from the new Vice-Chair, ISGAN’s leadership team currently consists of one Chair, Luciano Martini, Italy and two vice-Chairs Russell Conklin, USA and Arun Kumar Mishra, India.

ISGAN also welcomed a  guest participant, Emily Mitchell from the Photovoltaic Power Systems TCP (PVPS) who provided an overview of the recent highlights and publications based on current topics of PVPS. Furthermore, ISGAN’s input was sought for setting up a new task in PVPS concerning system integration of PV.

One focus of the meeting was the six Working Groups of ISGAN. Their strengths and challenges were focused on and further even stronger cooperation between the working groups on an urgent topic is planned.

Further plans were made for ISGAN to contribute with several highly relevant workshops to the upcoming Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) Events in India later this year.

Two Side-Events completed the ExCo meeting. The first took place before the meeting and focused on the national priorities and strategies of ISGAN’s participating countries. Valuable input from this side-event provided the foundation for further discussions and steered the direction for topics in which ISGAN should increase its focus.

The second side event was the Knowledge Sharing Project workshop on Network Planning under Uncertainties. More details about this workshop and the whole project with high international participation can be found here.

The Executive Committee of ISGAN will reconvene for the 26^th meeting in September 2023 in The Netherlands.

A survey has been conducted that aims at laying the basis for a common understanding of international market designs and different flexibility services that are currently in use. To capture the whole picture, the topic of market design was split into three subtopics, covering general market design, flexibility market design, and flexibility services for system operators. Each of these topics is made accessible by several questions that have been answered by the respective countries, enabling the Working Group to understand presently used market designs and flexibility services. We find that the design of electricity markets differs significantly between European and non-European countries, thus presenting a wide range of challenges to the countries in question. Consequently, there are no general-purpose solutions for the successful implementation of flexibility markets related to operational planning. However, several common issues were identified and will be investigated in the further course of the work of Working Group 9 through stakeholder interviews from participating countries.

Within the ever-changing modern power system, power flows are increasingly transitioning towards becoming controllable and bi-directional. The modern power systems are faced with increased challenges pertaining to the integration of new technologies and devices. On the one hand, the need to integrate highly volatile and decentralised renewable energy sources (such as photovoltaic and wind), while on the other hand, power systems are seeing an increase in loads and capacity due to electrification of the transport, storage and heating/cooling sector (e.g., electric vehicles and heat pumps). Additionally, a change in consumer behaviour and evolving markets are also influencing this transition Such activities create increasing complexities and challenges due to the unpredictability in power flows within the power system. In order to overcome these challenges, system operators are relying on the use of flexibility which offer a wide range of opportunities and sought-after solution by providing a wide range of important services, which can enable system operators in operating their networks in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. However, utilisation of these resources to their full potential requires increased coordination between all relevant stakeholders in the power system. This increased interaction will not only allow for system operators to support each other in the optimal use of their respective grids, but also ensure that operating strategies in one network do not have any negative impact on the other. Furthermore, increased interactions with large and small system end users will allow for increased participation and therefore increased opportunities available from flexible resources.

The following video presents the concepts related to the electricity transition and the challenges faced by system operators when integrating flexibility into their networks. Furthermore, through the implementations of coordination schemes, systems operators can work together in order to ensure the safe, secure and reliable electric systems of the future.

Building on the successes of past knowledge sharing projects on smart grid solutions, ISGAN has now embarked on an ambitious international initiative focused on how to best achieve adequate power grids in line with global sustainable development goals.

Engaging representatives from Transmission and Distribution System Operators, policy makers and research institutions in 13 countries as well as IRENA (the International Renewable Energy Agency), the Network Planning and Decision-Making under Uncertainty project deep-dives into the complex, multifaceted, and challenging task of developing network infrastructure as an enabler of low-carbon electricity, in a quickly evolving energy landscape.

During the first stages of the knowledge sharing process, experts have shared their insights and experiences regarding the sources and nature of uncertainty and complexity in network planning. The project now turns to co-creating concrete and globally relevant policy advice aimed to increase the ability of relevant stakeholders to deal with the inherent uncertainty and complexity in the network planning process.

The year-long project that kicked off in September 2022, involves a series of interlinked activities, including both digital and in-person workshops, as well as analytical tasks. The objective is to produce actionable policy advice in time for the next Clean Energy Ministerial Meeting (CEM14, July 2023 in Bengaluru, India). Next up is an intensive and highly interactive 2-day workshop in Berlin, 23-24 March, held in conjunction with the 25th meeting of the ISGAN Executive Committee.

For more information, please contact:

• ISGAN Communication Working Group/Structured Knowledge Exchange: Helena Lindquist
• ISGAN Working Group 6, Power Transmission & Distribution Systems: Susanne Ackeby

The 9th International Conference for the Integration of Renewable & Distributed Energy Resources (IRED 2022) gathered researchers from 14 different countries to share information on state-of-the-art technologies, research, and applications. ISGAN delegates and experts played a key role.

IRED 2022 was held in Adelaide, Australia, and organized by John Ward and his team at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

During the opening day, a session on Mission Innovation’s Green Powered Future Mission (GPFM) included ISGAN Chair Luciano Martini. ISGAN and GPFM recently signed an MOU to formalize their collaborations which will benefit members and facilitate the broader energy transition.

On Day 2, Ron Brandl, manager of ISGAN’s Smart Grid International Research Facility Network (SIRFN) introduced the importance of international research collaboration and was followed by Mihai Calin, Operating Agent of ISGAN, who hosted a panel “How Can Testing Accelerate Renewable Energy Integration?”

On the third day of IRED 2022, Austrian expert Barbara Herndler presented the results from the Working Group 6 task on DSO-TSO interaction. Finally, Matteo Troncia and Jose Pablo José Pablo Chaves from Spain won the 2022 IRED Poster Competition for their submission, “Flexibility Markets for Voltage Control in Transmission and Distribution Grids: Quantitative Assessment of a Realistic Case Study.”

IRED 2022 offered ISGAN delegates and experts the opportunity to share their knowledge and learn from outside experts and we hope the collaborations between ISGAN and IRED continue for IRED 2024. 

The regained personal interaction was particularly well utilized through a session in the World Café, during which highlights of the working groups were presented and discussed. This session encouraged close interaction between the Working Group Managers and ExCo members. ExCo members made suggestions based on their national strategies and goals on what they believe working groups should consider in their subsequent Programmes of Work.

Another session focused on ISGAN´s interaction with the IEA and other Technology Collaboration Programmes, the Mission Innovation Green Powered Future Mission, and the Clean Energy Ministerial. Indeed, one of ISGAN’s key activities is centered around engaging and cooperating with external stakeholders and initiatives to align aims, avoid overlaps, and share knowledge.

Overall, it was great to catch up with old friends and meet new experts and representatives. We’re already preparing for ExCo 25 set for March 2023 in Berlin!

Disclaimer

This report was prepared by the Secretariat of the International Smart Grid Action Network (ISGAN). ISGAN is organized as the Implementing Agreement for a Co-operative Programme on Smart Grids and operates under the framework of Technology Collaboration Programmes created by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of any of ISGAN’s participants, any of their sponsoring governments or organizations, the IEA Secretariat, or any of its member countries. No warranty is ex-pressed or implied, no legal liability or responsibility assumed for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, and no representation made that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring.

IRED is a global conference gathering experts from industry, government and academia to share information on state-of-the-art technologies, research and know-how and engage in lively discussions related to the integration of renewable and distributed energy resources into power systems. The conference will focus on the technical, market, and regulatory issues that challenge the integration of these resources into the grid. For details about the event, please visit https://ired2022.com.au/

ISGAN Virtual Learning invites to this webinar that presents generic models and local control schemes of renewable energy plants for Dynamic Virtual Power Plant (DVPP) integration. This includes different power plants as wind turbines, wind farms, PV systems, biogas-, hydropower, and solar thermal power plants. The individual generating units are described in a unified model structure for local control design, simulation and the analysis of their dynamical characteristics. The derived models are intended for the integration into a higher-level control design of DVPPs.

Speakers

Stephan Kusche (HTW Berlin)
Florian Pöschke (HTW Berlin)
Horst Schulte (HTW Berlin)

Intended audience

Power plant operators, certifiers, grid operators, manufacturers of wind turbines and PV power plants, inverter manufacturers, graduate students of electrical and control engineering, control engineers and power system engineers from industry and academics

Key messages

• Presentation of physically interpretable generic models of common renewable energy power plants (RPP) such as wind turbines, photovoltaics, biogas, hydropower, and solar thermal power plants in a unified modelling framework.
• Systematic justification and description of the internal controller structure of the primary (wind, PV, solar, biogas, hydro) and secondary (synchronous machine and power electronic converters) sides of the power plant types used in the DVPP
• Straightforward performance verification of the internal control system by means of relevant test scenarios such active and reactive setpoint changes, variation of the energy source (wind, sun) of non-dispatchable plants, Grid voltage drop, Phase angle step change
• Calculation of the frequency characteristics of RPPs for DVPP design
• Discussion of the planned experimental validation in the HTW lab

Further information

https://posytyf-h2020.eu

Speakers Bio

Stephan Kusche received a Diplom degree in physical engineering and a Ph.D. in viscoelastic friction. Since then, he has worked on various control engineering tasks, such as energy optimization in process technology and modeling of renewable energy sources. His research interests include electrodynamics, continuum mechanics, and mathematical and numeric methods.

Florian Pöschke received the M. Eng. in Automation from the University of Applied Sciences HTW Berlin. He recently defended his Ph.D. at the Leuphana University Lüneburg, where his work focused on the control of wind turbines and their interaction with the electrical grid. His research interest include the dynamical modeling and control of renewable energy systems from the primary source to electrical grid connection point. Along with the application of classical approaches, his expertise lies in the treatment of nonlinear system dynamics as a convex combination of linear submodels and the subsequent control design based on linear matrix inequalities.

Horst Schulte received a degree in Electrical Engineering from TU Berlin and a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from University Kassel (Germany). He then joined the Bosch Group (Rexroth) as a research engineer, where he worked on first principle modeling, identification, optimization, and advanced control of hydraulic pumps and motors, power systems, and drive trains. Since November 2009, he has been a full Professor at the University of Applied Sciences HTW Berlin. His research interests include nonlinear controller and observer design with Takagi-Sugeno (TS), LPV, sliding-mode techniques, robust and fault tolerant control system design. He translates these methods into industrial applications in automatic control of wind turbines and wind farms, PV power plants, the distributed control of power systems, and modeling and control of power electronic converters for sustainable power systems. He is i.e. the Chairman of the Federation of German Windpower and other Renewable Energies (FGW e.V.); Chairman of the VDI/VDE-GMA FA (Technical Committee) 5.14 Computational Intelligence; Associate Editor of the Journal ISA Transactions; Member of the IFAC Technical Committee 6.4 Fault Detection, Supervision & Safety of Techn. Processes; Vice-Chair of the IEEE CIS Task Force on “Fuzzy Systems in Renewable Energy and Smart Grids”; Member of the IEEE Control Systems Society.

Themes for ISUW 2023 Technical Paper are:

1. INDIA @ 100 in 2047: Vision for the Indian Power System
   • Net Zero Power Sector
   • Super Grids for Energy Transition
   • Role of ICT in Energy Transition
   • New Architecture of Climate and Pandemic Proof Infrastructure
2. Evolving Architecture of the 21st Century Grid with Two Way Power Flows
   • Planning And Design of Transmission Grid
   • Planning And Design of Distribution Grid with Prosumers and Electric Vehicles and Distributed Energy Resources
   • Communication Systems and Technologies for Fast Response- 1/50 (or) 1/60 Seconds
   • Separate Control Bus for IT and OT Systems
   • Climate Proofing of Future Grids
3. Electric Mobility 
   • Drones and Charging Infrastructure for Drones
   • Vehicle Grid Integration (VGI)
   • New Infrastructure Planning with Integrated EVSE
   • EVs as Virtual Power Plants (VPP)
   • Electric Highways and the Electric Grids
   • Business Models for EV Charging Stations
4. Foundational Blocks for Smart Grids
   • Learnings from Smart Grid Projects
   • Smart Microgrids for Campuses, Railway Stations, Sea Ports, Airports, Industrial Parks, Military Bases, Hotels, Hospitals, Slums, and Commercial Complexes
   • Cyber-Physical Security of the Critical Infrastructure
   • Standards and Interoperability of Equipment and Systems
   • Communication Solutions for Smart Grids and Smart Cities
   • Flexibility in Power Systems
   • Energy Storage ​Systems – Applications and Business cases
   • 250 Million Smart Meters in India – Rollout Strategies and Business Models
5. Disruptive Innovations for Utilities
   • Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Robotics
   • Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality Technologies for the Smart Grids and Smart Cities
   • Web 3.0 and Metaverse for Utilities
   • Wearable Devices
   • Blockchain Applications for Utilities
   • Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for Utilities
   • “Paper-less” and “Contact-less” Operations of Utilities
   • Digitalization, New Services and Revenue ​Streams
   • Voice of the Customer – What the Digital Customers Wants?
   • Customer Engagement Strategies and social media for Utilities​ – Customer Portal, Chat-bot, Voice-bot​
   • 5G Rollout and its Impact for Smart Grid Technologies
6. Smart Grids for Smart Cities
   • Common Automation and IT Layer for Smart City Infrastructure Domains
   • Unlocking the Value of Street Light Poles for Multiple Smart City Applications
   • Smart Home and Smart Appliances
   • Smart Grid as Anchor Infrastructure for Smart Cities
   • Smart Energy Communities
   • Distributed Generation
   • Combined Billing and Customer Care Systems for all Utilities in a Smart City
   • Common GIS Map for all Domains in a Smart City
   • Digital Twins
7. New and Emerging Technologies and Trends
   • DG Set Replacement with Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)
   • Green Hydrogen
   • District Cooling System
   • Electric Cooking
   • Grid Interactive Buildings and Campuses
   • Urban Air Mobility Systems (UAM)
8. Regulations for the Evolving Smart Energy Systems ​
   • 100% Renewables
   • Flexibility Solutions
   • Retail Competition
   • Green Power Markets
   • Ancillary Services
9. Smart Water  
   • Smart ​Solutions for Water Production, Transmission, and Distribution
   • Smart Technologies to Address India’s Urban Water Crisis
10. Smart City Gas Distribution 
    • Solutions for Gas Transmission and Distribution Networks
11. Cyber Security for the Digitalized Grids

ISGAN Virtual Learning invites to this webinar on the findings of three and a half years experience on European R&I projects: INTERRFACE and CoordiNet. These projects have been investigating the best ways for TSO-DSO coordination with regards to flexibility procurement. The project will provide recommendations to developing flexibility markets in Europe based on the experience from the different large-scale demonstrations across Europe.

Watch the webinar recordings

Speakers

Konstantinos Kotsalos (INTERRFACE)
Sebastian Vogel (CoordiNet)
Moderates
Gianluca Lipari (OneNet)

Intended audience

Students and researchers interested in power networks, policy makers working on electricity markets, utilities, regulators, industries and consumers with the potential to provide flexibility.

Key messages

Flexibility can be an important tool for system operators to optimise the use of the grid while ensuring security of supply and accelerating the penetration of renewables in the electricty network. Improved coordination among energy stakeholders incuding TSOs, DSOs, FSPs (BSPs/BRPs) and consumers plays a fundamental role in achieving the uptake of market-based flexibility solutions as part of the energy transition. Through their extensive collaboration, the INTERRFACE and CoordiNet projects have defined a set of tools necessary to overcome the challenges faced by market stakeholders, and will present their joint recommendations for paving the way towards harmonised flexibility markets in Europe.

Further information

CoordiNet deliverables:

https://coordinet.netlify.app/publications/deliverables

INTERRFACE deliverables:

http://www.interrface.eu/public-deliverables

ISGAN Academy invites to to this webinar that addresses the question of an optimal design of a cross-voltage level network operation, which takes into account an efficient use of flexibility resources.
We invite experts from the international projects DA/RE, OneNet, Redispatch 3.0 and CoordiNet, to shed light and discuss the topic TSO-DSO-Consumer coordination in today’s power system operation.

Watch the webinar recordings

Speakers

Julia Strahlhoff (DA/RE)
Jirapa Kamsamrong (Redispatch 3.0)
Yvonne Ruwaida (CoordiNet)
Gwen Willeghems (OneNet)
Ferdinando Bosco (OneNet)
Matteo Troncia (OneNet)
Moderates
Jose Pablo Chaves Avila

Intended audience

Academia, researchers, distribution system operators, transmission system operators, engineers, flexibility providers, ISGAN working groups 3, 6 and 9.

Key messages

The presentation serves to introduce current projects on the topic of TSO-DSO coordination. To show various ways of looking at the described topic different needs for coordination will be shown and various designs of coordination are discussed.  Possible results from this are the identification of differences or similarities regarding the level at which optimization takes place as well as different assumptions on market design, access to the coordinated resources and data management.

Further information

Dare Plattform

OneNet Project

Redispatch 3.0

Coordinet Project

Energy Transition and Circular Economy-related regulations are popping up around the world. Both energy efficiency and material efficiency are to be optimised. In electrical applications it is not always apparent how a trade-off between these goals can be avoided. The sustainable peak load concept for public distribution transformers does exactly that: it is beneficial to transformer energy efficiency as well as material efficiency, with no need for compromise.

This webinar will present the concept, several case studies, a thorough transformer loading survey carried out in US and a modelling exercise for the EU.

Speakers

Angelo Baggini Aggregate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Bergamo Chairman of Cenelec TC14 Chairman of CEI TC97 Over 200 technical and scientific papers Author of PQ Handbook (2008) and Electrical Energy Efficiency (2012), both published by Wiley and Sons
Alberto Cracco Managing and Sales Director, Westrafo Srl. Graduated as a management engineer at the University of Padua MBA 16 years of experience in the transformer industry
Bruno De Wachter Free-lance engineer-copywriter and consultant with focus on the energy sector Degree in Electrical Engineering (University of Ghent) A post-master’s in European Languages and their Literature (University of Antwerp). In-house consultant and copywriter for the European Copper Institute since 2011
Phil Hopkinson President and CEO of Hvolt Inc. Life Fellow IEEE Long-time member of IEEE Transformer Committee Holder of 15 US patents Technical Adviser to the USNC for Power Transformers, IEC TC 14 56 years of experience in the transformer industry (design, engineering and management)
Fernando Nuño Clean Energy Transition Programme Manager at the European Copper Institute Leads multiple publicly funded EU Horizon projects. Energy Engineer (Bilbao) ENSPM school (France) Experience at the French Energy Regulatory Commission and in the automotive sector
Alan Sbravati Global Customers Application Manager, Cargill 20 years of experience in the US transformer industry Dozens of publications on transformers Active member of IEEE Transformer Committee

Intended audience

Policy makers, distribution system operators, utilities, electricity market regulators, academia, consultants, transformer manufacturers, transformer value chain.

Key messages

• The total annual energy losses of a sustainable peak load unit are similar to those of a conventional unit. This is due to the fact that the average loading in public distribution networks is low, resulting in a higher relative importance of no-load losses compared to load losses.
• The material savings potential of sustainable peak load transformers is substantial, with reductions in total weight of 11 – 15%.
• The purchase cost of a sustainable peak load transformer is comparable to that of a conventional transformer if all other parameters are kept the same.

Further information

https://help.leonardo-energy.org/hc/en-us/articles/4409606711570–Cu0277-Maximizing-distribution-transformer-resource-efficiency-Potential-contribution-to-EU-Green-Deal-objectives

https://www.powertransformernews.com/2021/12/13/the-sustainable-peak-load-concept-and-public-distribution-transformers/

https://ee-ip.org/en/article/integrating-energy-and-material-efficiency-in-public-distribution-transformers-6317

As zero operational-cost variable Renewable Energy Sources are foreseen to dominate the future energy mix, the abundance of green electricity will allow the replacement of fossil fuels in sectors such as heating, cooling, industrial processes, and transport. The intermittency of such energy resources implies significant systemic requirements for flexible solutions; thus, developments of the energy sector in general, and the power system in particular, instigate significant innovation activities in the fields of power system flexibility. Concurrently, complexities and interdependencies of system components and multitude of actors increase the risks of service failures and the complexity of production and grid planning, raising the demand for stronger and more agile resilience means and countermeasures. In this white paper we discuss the item “How can flexibility support resilience?”, considering the increased societal needs of a secure electricity supply. A report summarising experiences from large number of initiatives in a collaborative effort between of ISGAN WG 6 and ETIP SNET WG1.

Overview

This paper draws on the work carried out in the UK by the Energy Data Taskforce and how its recommendations pertain to and align with flexibility service provisions and market developments in the UK. Insights from relevant energy
stakeholders (networks, industry/innovation and academia) have also been incorporated.

Overview

There are many developments around flexibility within the energy system, particularly around electricity network reinforcement avoidance and trading platforms. However, there are also significant gaps in this area that could hinder the participation of innovators in the flexibility markets and, at the same time, limit the procurement process for network companies. This insight paper attempts to capture the views and insights from experts within the UK and draw out the key takeaways.

One focused on the continuation of work done previously in the Power System Flexibility Initiative in ISGAN. The other discussed the topic Stepping up ambition of CEM initiatives.  

The second day was fully dedicated to the ISGAN Working groups. ISGAN took the opportunity of the request for extension for the next 5-year period to perform a strategy process. As a result of this a new Working Group dedicated to the dissemination and communication of ISGAN results was created. The first Programme of Work of this working group was discussed. Also, the other 5 Working groups of ISGAN presented their Programmes of Work for the year 2022.  

On the third day ISGAN welcomed presenters from Mission Innovation Irmgard Herold and from the Global Smart Energy Federation, Dr. Reiji Kumar Pilai. Both presented recent developments and plans in their organizations and possible interactions as well as the Letters of Intent with both organizations were discussed. 

Finally, the meeting participants acknowledged the high level of commitment and excellent work that Maarten Noeninckx has done for ISGAN. Maarten leaves ISGAN as Vice-Chair and delegate for Belgium. The work he has done over the years as head of the Budget Review Group was also very highly recognized. 

The ExCo Meeting was followed by a Side Event organized by the Working Group on Flexibility Markets where Energy Systems Catapult presented their findings from the Energy Digitalisation Taskforce. 

The demonstration led by ELES in the OSMOSE project demonstrated the possibility of cross-border flexibility activation near-to-real time while comlying with grid limitations.

The near real-time potential of flexibility of hydro producers was explored: new tools were developed and live demonstrated to estimate their remaining flexibility 15 min before delivery time.

The processes implemented resulted in a real cross-border activation thanks to a selection of bids every 5 minutes and an activation signal sent every 10 seconds.

Join the webinar: 2022-04-21 at h 13:00 CEST (UTC+2)

Speakers

Gorazd Ažman, ELES	Andrea Bello, HDE	Miran Kavrečić, HSE
Dusan Vlaisavljevic, EKC	Marilena Lazzaro, ENG	Charles Payement, RTE

Intended audience

Junior engineers; students; researchers; utilities; regulators; policymakers;

Further information

https://www.osmose-h2020.eu/ 

The Italian demo of OSMOSE project tested different kinds of flexibility solutions in a 9 month long experimentation on a real HV grid portion: one of this is the flexibility from the grid itself! By exploiting accurate load and generation forecasts and cost effective Dynamic Thermal Rating solutions, a new Energy Management System was developed in order to detect and solve efficiently congestions in a 3 hours ahead horizon.

Join the webinar: 2022-04-07 at h 13:00 CEST (UTC+1)

Speakers

• Leonardo Petrocchi (Terna)
• Giuseppe Lisciandrello (Terna)
• Dario Ronzo (RSE)
• Davide Poli (ENSIEL)
• Alfredo Vaccaro (ENSIEL)

Key messages

Capital-light investments and prediction algorhitm can enhance existing assets exploitation, becoming an efficient add-on to standard infrastructural planning of the grid.

Intended audience

TSOs, academy, industry

Further information

https://www.osmose-h2020.eu/ 

The speakers will lead you towards two demonstration activities part of the OSMOSE project concerning off-the-shelf inverters interfacing energy storage systems with the power grid that can be turned into grid-forming units through suitable control upgrades in order to provide several services to the power system when it hosts massive amount of inverter-based renewable/stochastic generation. This is achieved thanks to the provision of synchronisation services superposed to classic regulation ones.

Join the webinar: 2022-04-05 at h 13:00 CEST (UTC+1)

Speakers

Carmen Cardozo (RTE R&D)	Mario Paolone (EPFL)	Markel Zubiaga (Ingeteam R&D)

Key messages

Within the context of service provision to future power systems hosting massive amount of inverter-based renewable/stochastic generation, 2 demonstrators have shown that grid forming capability can be provided from off-the-shelf equipment. One demonstration is based on a existing MW-class BESS connected to the medium voltage grid of the EPFL campus, while the other was built for the OSMOSE project by Ingeteam and connecter to the RTE network.

• Both demos proved that grid forming capability can be provided without hardware oversizing, drawing out the most of existing equipment and therefore limiting the cost.
• A hybrid system showed that supercapacitors installed on the DC side can handled all fast transients induced by grid forming control, therefore smoothing the battery output power.
• The controls have been improved to behave properly in different grid conditions including harmonics and unbalanced conditions.
• Multiservices provision can be done including grid forming capability taking into account the unit’s operational constraints.
• Accurate distribution-class PMUs can be used to assess the performance of grid forming vs grid following units.

Intended audience

This webinar is mainly suitable for transmission system operators (TSO), energy providers, converter manufacturers and researchers in the field of power electronics and/or power systems stability and control. The content of the webinar is also comprehensible for students and engineers with some background in the power systems dynamics.

Further information

https://www.osmose-h2020.eu/ 

To adapt to the various changes, the interaction between stakeholders within the electricity supply chain is becoming increasingly more important. These interactions, despite their various challenges, provide many opportunities for increased efficiency of the operation and planning of modern networks in the future. To utilize flexibility to its full potential, coordination between various stakeholders within the energy supply chain is required. The increased need for stakeholder interaction relies on the advanced collaboration between respective parties which needs to be facilitated through technology advancements, data exchange mechanisms, regulatory considerations, and economic analysis.

To evaluate the perspectives on the flexibility and stakeholder interaction, a survey was launched, and its findings are presented in this report. The results of this survey provide an overview of flexibility and stakeholder interaction based on the various perceptions from a wide range of respondents from different geographic locations and sectors. The survey highlights the current status of the related topics and allows for the opportunity to identify concepts, such as challenges and opportunities, which require increased attention by all stakeholders in modern power systems of the future. This work provides a foundation for future work which will be conducted in the next phase within Working Group 6 and Working Group 9.

During this meeting, it is planned to discuss ISGAN’s cooperation with several other initiatives, IEA TCPs, and key organizations acting in the field of Smart Grids. It is our aim to enhance the cooperation with the most relevant initiatives/organizations and to bring them to the Working Group level in order to facilitate effective collaboration and knowledge sharing activities such that it is mutually beneficial and relevant for all stakeholders.

Furthermore, the Working Groups (former Annexes) will present their results from the past year’s activites and their Programmes of Work (PoW) for the present year. For the first time, the Communication Working Group will present a unified PoW for the year 2022.

We are expecting highly dynamic and active participation from all members of the Executive Committee throughout the meeting in order to discuss, agree, and conclude on the necessary decisions to promote/continue the successful work done within the ISGAN community.

Summary

Many developments are taking place around flexibility within energy system(s), particularly around electricity network reinforcement avoidance and trading platforms. However, the scoping study hypothesis was that there are also significant gaps in research. As such, the study conducted a literature review to confirm areas that are being considered and concurrently surveyed ISGAN member countries to gather additional thoughts and concerns.

Conclusions were that there are areas that still need to be addressed, namely:

1. Integration of trading with dispatch
2. Understanding of multiple actors’, requirements (including where those requirements are conflicting) for flexibility and the commercial implications
3. A need to identify the characteristics that different flexibility options provides and how to access them
4. Interoperable markets to support the development and usage of flexible products and services at scale
5. Consumer focused flexibility
6. Avoiding stability/security of supply issues through loss of diversity

This report summarises the findings of the literature study and the survey, and explains the thought leadership, to date, in the areas described as gaps above.

IEC standards are essential to ensure a successful industrial uptake of innovative smart grid solutions, however further research and innovation are requested in order to develop standardized descriptions of innovative components.

This webinar introduces the activities performed in the OSMOSE project regarding the engineering process and the functional tests performed on a dedicated demonstrator, based on the international standard IEC 61850.  It addresses in particular the following questions aspects:

• Engineering process: configuration of the system, having devices from different manufacturers
• Results of functional tests: validation of the system configuration.

Join the webinar: 2022-01-28 at h 13:00 CET (UTC+1)

Speakers

Thomas Sterckx	Camille Bloch	Christoph Brunner	João Saragoça	Jörg Reuter

Key messages

IEC standards are essential to ensure a successful industrial uptake of innovative smart grid solutions, however further research and innovation actions are requested in order to to develop standardized descriptions of innovative components.

The proposed webinar describe the activities performed by OSMOSE partners during the engineering process and functional tests performed in WP7.1 and the contributions that these activities had provided to the development of IEC 61850 standards.

Intended audience

Very large audience from TSO, to DSO, DER project developers, components manufacturers and selected and invited external stakeholders (e.g.: ENTSO-E; T&D Europe, etc.)

Readings

1. Related web page on project website: www.osmose-h2020.eu/project-overview/wp7/
2. Deliverable link: https://www.osmose-h2020.eu/download/d7-1-iec61850-entso-e-profile-introduction-and-engineering-process-refinement/

Overview

The first factsheet presents some insights into metering as an enabler for consumer-focused flexibility, and gives a brief overview of the two generations of smart meter roll-outs in Sweden, as well as the national regulation of minimum functional requirements for electricity meters.

In spring 2021, the Swedish Energy Markets Inspectorate submitted a report to the Government with recommendations on how to facilitate the concept of independent aggregators in Swedish legislation. The second factsheet aims to summarise the main analysis and recommendations of the report.

The third factsheet presents some insights into price signals and consumer flexibility, and gives a brief overview of the characteristics of dynamic electricity pricing, as well as some food for thought going forward.

ISGAN Academy invites to to the fifth episode of the Smart4RES webinar series. The webinar will provide an industrial view on the problematic and role of storage and a discussion on utilities needs and expectation through addressing the different Smart4RES use cases. The webinar will also focus on the joint optimization and dispatch of RES power plants and storage topic through different angles.
Finally, a presentation of the work done by ICCS will focus on the dispatch of RES and storage in isolated power systems including storage ancillary services and frequency security.

More info on www.smart4res.eu

Join the webinar: 2021-12-09 at h 12:00 CET (UTC+1)

Speakers

Maria Inês Marques EDP NEW R&D	Simon Camal MINES ParisTech/ARMINES – Centre PERSEE	Dimitrios Lagos ICCS

Key messages

1. Electrochemical batteries constraints and what EDP foresees for future (coupling storage and renewables).
2. Importance of modelling in assets management, maintenance and lifecycle.
3. Combination of technologies, presenting VPP to the market instead of physical ones.
4. Multi-objective optimization for RES and storage offer interpretable results to stakeholders who want to participate in multiple electricity markets.
5. Data-driven trading solutions simplify the modelling chain of trading decisions.
6. Necessary ancillary services for storage systems in non-interconnected island systems with high RES penetration.
7. Dispatch of thermal units, RES and storage in non-interconnected island systems considering the frequency security and the ancillary services provided by storage devices.

Intended audience

• International
• TSOs/DSOs
• Storage system industrials
• RES producers, aggregators, grid operators
• RES traders
• Academia, Regulation bodies

Readings

1. Smart4res website
2. Forecasting and optimization of ancillary services provision by renewable energy sources.
3. Smart4RES: Towards next generation forecasting tools of renewable energy production.

The initiative aims to step up global climate action and uptake of clean energy models. Pilot projects will provide an opportunity to gain on-the-ground insights, test new approaches and disseminate learnings that will feed into the IEA’s Digital Demand-Driven Electricity Networks (3DEN) Initiative, which focuses on the policy, regulatory, technology and investment context needed to accelerate progress on power system modernisation and effective utilisation of demand-side resources.

25 October webinar: The webinar will be an opportunity for the public and private sector to learn more about the call for proposals. Proposals are expected to showcase innovative business and regulatory models for the uptake of smarter digital power infrastructure. Information shared will include the terms of reference for pilot projects, application process and timeline, and selection criteria.

This webinar introduces the Dynamic Virtual Power Plant (DVPP) concept under development by the European Commission funded project POSYTYF, that aims to facilitate Renewable Energy Sources (RES) integration into the electrical network. After an overall project presentation, the webinar will introduce the proposed DVPP concept and detail the first project deliverable: the definition and specification of DVPP scenarios.

More info on https://posytyf-h2020.eu/

Join the webinar: 2021-11-18 at h 15:00 CET (UTC+1)

Key messages

1. The new DVPP concept fully integrates the dynamic aspects at all levels: locally (for each RES generator), globally (for grid ancillary services and interaction with other neighbour elements of the grid) and economically (for internal optimal dispatch and participation to electricity markets)
2. A DVPP is a set of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) along with a set of control and operation procedures. This means methodologies for:
   • choosing the participating RES, optimal and continuous operation as a whole (especially in case of loss of natural resources – e.g., wind, sun – on a part of the DVPP),
   • regulation (in the dynamic sense) to ensure local objectives for each generator,
   • participation to ancillary services of the DVPP as a unit and to diminish negative effects of interaction with neighbour dynamics elements of the power system,
   • integration in both actual power systems scenarios (with mixed classic and power electronics-based generation) and future ones with high degree of RES penetration.

Intended audience

• Power system engineers, from students to senior experts.

Speakers

Bogdan Marinescu Ecole Centrale Nantes	Oriol Gomis Bellmunt Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya	Carlos Collados Rodriguez Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya

Speakers Bio

Bogdan Marinescu was born in 1969 in Bucharest, Romania. He received the Engineering degree from the Polytechnical Institute of Bucharest in 1992, the PhD from Université Paris Sud-Orsay, France in 1997 and the “Habilitation à diriger des recherches” from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, France in 2010. He is currently a Professor in Ecole Centrale Nantes and LS2N laboratory where he is the Head of the chair “Analysis and control of power grids”  (2014-2024) and the Coordinator of the European project POSYTYF (Research & Innovation Action, 2020-2023). In the first part of his carrier, he was active in R&D divisions of industry (EDF and RTE) and as a part-time professor (especially from 2006 to 2012 in Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan). His main fields of interest are the theory and applications of linear systems, robust control and power systems engineering.

Oriol Gomis-Bellmunt received the degree in industrial engineering from the School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona (ETSEIB), Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 2001 and the doctoral degree in electrical engineering from the UPC in 2007. In 1999, he joined Engitrol SL where he worked as Project Engineer in the automation and control industry. Since 2004, he has been with the Electrical Engineering Department of the UPC where he is Professor and participates in the CITCEA-UPC Research Group. He is involved in a number of research projects in national and international consortiums (medium-long term research oriented) and technology transfer projects with several manufacturers, operators and developers worldwide (short-term research and practical application). His research interests are focused on the understanding of modern power systems, based on power electronics (HVDC, FACTS, energy storage and renewables) and grid integration of renewable energy, especially onshore and offshore wind and solar photovoltaics. Since 2020, he is an ICREA Academia researcher. Since 2021, he is IEEE Fellow.

Carlos Collados-Rodriguez received the Bachelor’s degree in Energy Engineering and the Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 2014 and 2017 respectively. He joined CITCEA-UPC research group in 2013, where he is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering. His research interests include power converters, HVDC systems, grid integration of renewable energy and power system analysis, especially in power-electronics-dominated power systems.

Readings

1. B. Marinescu, O. Gomis-Bellmunt, F. Dörfler, H. Schulte, L. Sigrist, Dynamic Virtual Power Plant: A New Concept for Grid Integration of Renewable Energy Sources, https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.00153.

2. Deliverable 1.1 when publicly released: Definition and specification of Dynamic Virtual Power Plant (DVPP) scenarios.

Solutions providing advances in flexibility are of utmost importance for the future power system.
However, flexibility is not a unified term and is lacking a commonly accepted definition. The flexibility term is used as an umbrella covering various needs and aspects in the power system which complicates the discussion on flexibility and craves for differentiation to enhance clarity.

The goal of this questionnaire is to provide an increased understanding of the topic of flexibility in operation and planning of the  power system.

The purpose of this survey is to collect information and stakeholder perspectives on:

1. How flexibility is understood and deployed within various countries/regions, and to collect additional sources of information relevant to international experiences related to flexibility.
2. How system/network operators and other stakeholders perceive the impact of flexibility and their interaction.
3. Research projects related to flexibility in the power system

The results of the survey will be used for:

• Consolidation of the ISGAN discussion paper titled: “Flexibility harvesting and its impact on stakeholder interaction”
• Assessment of flexibility markets and flexibility stakeholders.

During this meeting it is planned to discuss the future strategy of ISGAN on its way into its third period. Possible restructuring and the new legal framework will be addressed. The latest results of all nine ISGAN Annexes will be presented and discussions on the next steps for cooperation with other organisations are planned.

For any inquiry regarding the ISGAN and the ExCo21 meeting, please contact the ISGAN Secretariat at ISGAN[at]ait.ac.at.

Highlights of 2020 include:

• Two very fruitful online Ex.Co. meetings, where the following topics were in the main focus:

1) Request for Extension and Strategy process(a strategy process for the preparation of the next phase of ISGAN).
2) Cooperation with other organizations, TCPs, and initiatives

• Based on the successful Knowledge Transfer Project (KTP) approach developed within ISGAN since 2016, a new process design was developed for the Regulatory Sandbox 2.0 Project
• Under the lead of the UK, a new Annex 9 on Flexibility Markets Development and Implementation was approved and officially started on January 26th, 2021.
• The CEM Horizontal Accelerator for “Power System Integration of Electric Vehicle (EV) Infra-structure” is an innovative mechanism strengthening the collaboration and capitalizing on the synergies between four CEM workstreams: the International Smart Grid Action Network (ISGAN), 21st Century Power Partnership (21CPP), the Electric Vehicle Initiative (EVI) & the Power System Flexibility (PSF) Campaign.
• ISGAN and the Power System Flexibility Campaign (PSF) organized a joint workshop “A holistic approach to low emission energy systems through the sector integration” This event took place as an official pre-event of the CEM11/MI-5 Ministerial meeting on Wednesday 16 September 2020.
• The Smart Grid Evaluation Toolkit
• In collaboration with Annex 2 and 7, Annex 4 supported the publication of policy messages on Innovative Regulatory Approaches with Focus on Experimental Sandboxes to Enable Smart Grid Deployment.
• Public SIRFN Webinar on “Testing Methods and Certification Protocols of IEA-ISGAN:SIRFN”,  October 15th, 2020
• SIRFN Fact Sheet  “ISGAN Annex 5 General Brochure”
• Joint SIRFN and related SIRFN member publications
• Micro grids vs Mega grids
• Lessons learned from international projects on TSO-DSO interaction
• inter-Annex Regulatory Sandboxes 2.0 project
• The ISGAN Academy webinars
• The ISGAN Award of Excellence
• Capturing Flexibility in Local Energy Systems Workshop

For the full activity description feel free to download the latest issue of our Activity Report below.

The growth of power generation from Non-Programmable Renewable Energy Sources (NPRES) is accompanied by a progressive decrease of the operating hours of large synchronous generators. This increases complexity and costs, for Transmission System Operators (TSOs), to keep power system operation reliable and secure, since power flows are affected by more variability and unpredictability and, at the same time, less resources are available for frequency and voltage regulation, system balancing support and congestion management.

Thanks to their fast response, flexible control and easy scalability, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) can be part of the solution mix to face such issues, by contributing to the supply of Ancillary Services (AS), both in a stand-alone configuration and in support of NPRES plants and of conventional plants.

AS include traditional ones, originally tailored to conventional power plants, and novel ones, which are gradually being introduced by TSOs to meet the new needs for prompt intervention against system perturbations.

However, services characterized by comparatively slow response times and small power gradients may require large energy contributions, which may be difficult to achieve with the BESS limited energy content, while fast services, despite requiring smaller energy contributions, are not widespread (they have been introduced mainly into isolated power systems) and still lack consolidated regulatory frameworks and remuneration mechanisms. Besides, BESS investment costs, although exhibiting a decreasing trend, are still rather high.

Therefore, techno-economic analyses are needed to understand with what performance (in meeting power exchange requests and in coping with cycling aging) and with what profitability, for their owner/Balancing Service Provider (BSP), BESS could provide single or multiple services together (to look for revenue stacking in case a single service is not enough to reach investment payback).

“Power” versus “energy” services: e.g., with reference to the Italian nomenclature,

• primary and fast frequency regulation versus tertiary frequency regulation/balancing and NPRES imbalance reduction;
• secondary frequency regulation is somewhat in-between.

Remuneration schemes:

• payment for availability: remuneration for power made available (e.g., Italian pilot projects called Fast Reserve and UVAM – virtual eligible units including different kinds of technology; British Enhanced Frequency Response)
• payment for activation: remuneration for energy actually exchanged (e.g., standard AS in Italy, pilot projects in Italy)
• the two forms of payment can be present together (e.g., Italian pilot projects called Fast Reserve and UVAM).

To this purpose, a dynamic response model and a stochastic optimization procedure for BESS sizing and management have been employed in this work. According to the results obtained in the simulations (mainly based on the current Italian market rules and Grid Code specifications),

• “power” services remunerated for activation may not be profitable enough for a BESS, due to the rather small energy exchanges involved (this happens, e.g., for the Italian standard primary frequency regulation). In that case, the presence of a remuneration for the power made available could be fundamental to determine the economic attractiveness of such services.
• For “energy” services, payment for activation can be profitable, due to the rather large energy exchanges involved. The actual profitability is anyway also determined by the energy prices.
  • In the Italian Ancillary Service Market (ASM), e.g., upward/downward prices for secondary and for tertiary frequency regulation (and balancing) seem to be sufficiently high/low respectively, although further analyses of historical market results are needed, to understand the impact of bid acceptance uncertainty on BESS economic results and to inquire whether suitable bidding strategies could be put in place by BESS to become competitive on the ASM.
  • In other European countries, these services can benefit of remuneration both for availability and for activation: e.g., in Germany and in Switzerland, all the services except Frequency Containment Reserve (FCR, which has only an availability payment). In the presence of a double remuneration, higher revenues could of course be expected; however, the specific remuneration prices should be analysed, to understand whether acceptable return on investment could be obtained.

Looking at Europe, the European Commission “Study on energy storage – Contribution to the security of the electricity supply in Europe, Final Report”, March 2020, plus a questionnaire shared among the ISGAN partners show that BESS are undergoing a fast development process, especially in Continental Europe (CE) and in Great Britain (GB). In CE, this process is mainly fostered by the high level of interconnection and by the cooperation among countries for balancing service procurement: such cooperation has already led to an integration of the platforms for energy exchange and balancing service exchange. In GB, electricity markets are very mature and exhibit a high segmentation of AS, aiming at better adapting to power system’s needs, on the one hand, and at creating business opportunities for market operators, on the other hand.

BESS are already present in many European countries, both as large stationary devices and as small distributed ones (and also as electric vehicles). They are often allowed to participate in wholesale energy exchange (on day-ahead/intraday markets) and/or in AS supply (via trading in ASMs in particular). BESS usually provide FCR and automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve (aFRR), sometimes manual Frequency Restoration Reserve (mFRR) and Replacement Reserve (RR); at present, BESS installed power devoted to AS ranges from few MW to some tens of MW to some hundreds of MW; such BESS are managed by few operators, mainly BSPs.

In several European countries, rules for BESS participation in electricity markets are the same as the ones for conventional power plants. Besides, in some countries this participation is allowed only via pilot projects, although BESS can already be aggregated together and also with loads and distributed generators. Work is still needed to overcome barriers to BESS full deployment, e.g. in terms of service technical specifications and performance requirements, market eligibility requirements, remuneration schemes.

Building upon the successes of the first ISGAN initiative on the topic in 2019, the project has resulted in four key Policy Messages to the Clean Energy Ministerial and the wider international energy community. The project was selected to share these results as an official On Demand Side Event of the 12th Clean Energy Ministerial meeting, hosted by Chile.

The Policy Messages have been co-created by experts and practitioners from ministries, regulatory bodies and research institutions in 15 countries on 3 continents through a unique knowledge sharing process combining international knowledge exchange workshops with stakeholder dialogue at national level.

The focus questions that guided the international dialogue included: how sandbox programmes can be integrated into longer term energy transition strategies; the legal preconditions and exemption laws to enable sandbox programmes; how to coordinate between different stakeholders in programme implementation, and how to design evaluation processes for policy learning.

APPLY UNTIL 31 AUGUST FOR FREE-OF-CHARGE ACCESS to Europe’s best smart energy testing facilities for your own research: https://lnkd.in/evBCF9s. For your research stay or remote access you can choose the laboratories of the following research centers: AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, SINTEF Energy Research, DTU – Technical University of Denmark, Ormazabal, University of Strathclyde, PNDC, ΔΕΔΔΗΕ Α.Ε. HEDNO S.A., ICCS – NTUA , Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico – RSE SpA, OFFIS – Institute for Information Technology, Fraunhofer IEE, KEMA Labs, RWTH Aachen University, Centre for Renewable Energy Sources and Saving (CRES), Technische Universiteit Delft, JRC of the European Commission, PV Technology, FOSS Research Centre for Sustainable Energy, and VTT. Remote access to the labs is possible depending on the conditions at the lab and your research requirements.

  

The workshops, divided in two parts, involved a large amount of interaction and engagement, gathering a total of 40 participants from ETIPS NET and ISGAN.

Presentations at the workshops provided multifaceted views, from the international work of CIGRE, the over-all System Operation and TSO perspectives, to the DSO and Local energy community perspectives. A large number of relevant projects and solutions were presented, including: OneNet, iFlex, Platone, Coordinent, FlexPlan, CINELDI, OSMOSE, Flextranstore, BD4NRG, X-FLEX, LINK Holistic perspective & Inertia monitoring for system state observability.

A conclusion from the workshops is that many of the ongoing projects are providing highly relevant knowledge to the question of How flexibility can support power grid resilience. Some of the mentioned solutions include:

• system protection schemes (e.g. islanding, congestion mitigation)
• situational awareness / system state observability
• cybersecurity highlighted by common platforms/data sharing with AI/ML solutions

Furthermore, standardisation of solutions (architecture, tools, platforms) is an important step to be taken to increase reliability & acceptance in order for large scale deployment.

We would like to thank all participants, with a special thanks to the presenters:

• Rajiv Porwal, POSOCO
• Zivorad Serafimoski, Mepso
• Emre Zengin, Gebze Organize Sanayi Bölgesi
• Steven Wong, NRCan
• Antonio Iliceto, Terna
• Ewa Mataczyńska, IPE
• Albana Ilo, Tu Wien
• Jan-Hendrik Ernst, Reactive-Technologies
• Poria Divshali, Enerim
• José Pablo Chaves Ávila, Comillas
• Ilaria Losa, RSE
• Santiago Gallego, Iberdrola
• David Martin, Iberdrola
• Gianluigi Migliavacca, RSE
• Hanne Sæle, SINTEF
• Nuno Souza e Silva, R&D Nester
• Lola Alacreu García, ETRA

ISGAN Annex 6
Professor Irina Oleinikova
irina.oleinikova@ntnu.no

ETIP SNET WG1
Emil Hillberg
emil.hillberg@ri.se

Since 2014, ISGAN has recognised and showcased the leadership and innovation of more than 40 distinguished smart grid projects through an annual ISGAN Award of Excellence competitions each with a special focus.

The 7th ISGAN Award of Excellence recognizes exemplars in the field of smart grids with a special focus on “Future-Proofing the Grid Operation via Advanced Digitalisation and IoT”.

The ceremony of its award competition will take place at the 12th Clean Energy Ministerial on 2 June 2021.

Auditorium, 19:25-19:55 CEST, Wednesday 2 June 2021

*After being broadcast in the Auditorium, the recorded ceremony will be accessible through the On-Demand section. 

Participants will get first hand information about

• related activities in Austria, Canada, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and Finland, and
• policy messages to the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM).

In the second part experts and practitioners will discuss

• how new projects on Smart Energy Systems can learn from this and
• how the insights can help to upscale their projects in regulatory sandboxes; and
• which insights are there and what do they mean to all the (new) actors in the SES world?

Building on the first initiative on Experimental Sandboxes (in 2019), ISGAN has organized a series of interactive knowledge transfer workshops and accompanying activities on maximizing learning from and by Regulatory Sandboxes and other Regulatory Experimenting programs for Smart Energy Systems.
This is based the policy messages sent to the Clean Energy Ministerial conference taking place in Chile from 31 May to 6 June 2021.

CEM being the high-level global forum of energy ministers of 28 countries (plus European Union) to encourage the transition to a global clean energy economy.

Join the webinar: 2021-06-10 at h 14:00 CEST (UTC+2)

Speakers

Helena Lindquist	Klaus Kubeczko	Magnus Olofsson
Dierk Bauknecht	Nicole Kerhof

Intended audience

• International decision-makers from the energy sector and the power system industry
• RES producers, aggregators, grid operators, and traders
• Academia
• Regulatory bodies

Join the webinar: 2021-06-09 at h 13:00 CEST (UTC+2)

Speakers

Matthias Lange, EMSYS	Simon Camal, ARMINES
Pierre Pinson, DTU

Intended audience

Senior Engineers and researchers in power systems

Energy economics & regulation experts

Join the webinar: 2021-05-27 at h 14:00 CEST (UTC+2)

Speakers

Florian Boehnke	Maxime Laasri
Sandrine Bortolotti	Christoph Weber

Intended audience

Non experts but potential users of the standard, from TSO, DSO, DER project developers, to components manufacturers.

Key messages

• The IEC61850 is an international standard defining rules and guidelines for substation protection and automation system communication, configuration and testing, supported by a data model and a configuration language.
• The IEC61850 standard provides an engineering process to allow efficient device configuration.
• Osmose provides and demonstrates the required extensions for engineering process extensions to support an efficient top-down end-to-end engineering process from concept and specification to configuration.
• Osmose provides recommendations for IEC61850 WG10 in order to integrate the projects developments into a future release of the standard.

Questions

• Have you ever heard of the IEC61850 standard?
• Are you applying it in your substations?
• How do you go from specification to IED configuration? Do you consider this as an efficient process?
• Where do you believe improvements on engineering processes can be made?
• Where do you believe improvements on the IEC61850 standard can be made?

Join the webinar: 2021-05-03 at h 15:00 CEST (UTC+2)

Speakers

Yves Marie Bourien	Thomas Sterckx
Christoph Brunner	Camille Bloch

Intended audience

Academy members from the power systems and meteorological areas, forecasting services providers, renewable plant operators and market traders, and widely TSOs, DSOs and regulators.

Key messages

• A huge amount of observations (radiometers, ceilometers, sky images, satellites as well as solar plants) are used to derive solar nowcasts as well as the initial state of the atmosphere used by improved numerical weather models. The evolution of which is then predicted by NWP and LES.
• For solar power prediction, both observations from the ground and from satellite are used, mostly to identify clouds and predict the displacement over time and space as well as their impact on solar radiation.
• Smart4RES develops complementary methods to blend information from multiple source of data and to propose novel approaches towards a seamless view of RES forecasting at various temporal and spatial granularity levels.
• As an example, Smart4RES new approach to data assimilation combines the best of the observations with the best of the physical models to produce optimized temporal and spatial irradiance maps and forecasts. Such detail can be useful for the optimized operation of solar power plants and grids with significant solar power penetration.

Join the webinar: 2021-04-29 at h 13:00 CEST (UTC+2)

Speakers

Bijan Nouri	Annette Hammer

Yet another successful ISGAN Executive Committee meeting (ExCo21) took place online between 16th and 18th of March 2021.

ISGAN continues it’s cooperation with several other organizations and initiatives. These include large associations and initiatives, the World Bank, other TCPs; CEM, and other IEA organizations, the Global Smart Energy Federation (GSEF, formerly Global Smart Grids Foundation) and Mission Innovation (Power Mission). To ensure excellent communication with these initiatives, liaison persons from ISGAN were suggested and a dedicated breakout session was organized addressing the ways to enhance ISGAN collaborations and outreach.

Hungary is highly interested in joining our ranks and was represented by Dr. Katalin Véhmann, International Coordinator for Electricity from the EU Market Integration Unit in the Department of International Relations, who provided a presentation reporting on remote metering roll-out in Hungary, which is currently being installed and gave an overview of the progress over the last year by distribution system operator (DSO) companies.

AIT was selected for another term as ISGAN Co-Secretariat. Thanks for the excellent work in the past years as well as appraisal of the high quality of the proposal documents were expressed by the ExCo.

Several activities were presented in order to update ISGAN’s strategy and structure for the Request for Extension (RfE) process including the progress of the RfE team and the results of self-assessment of the existing Annexes.

The Operating Agents of the active Annexes reported to the ISGAN Executive Committee on the progress of ongoing work and planned activities.

• Annex 2: Case Books dedicated to outstanding smart grid applications
• Annex 3: Tools for the assessment of present smartness of electricity networks
• Annex 4: Organization of knowledge, key issues, insightful analysis for decision makers
• Annex 5: SIRFN . Smart grid research and testing facilities, test beds and protocols
• Annex 6: Improve understanding of smart grid technologies
• Annex 7: Governance and socio-technical issues associated with smart grids deployment
• Annex 8: ISGAN Academy – Continuous training on technical skills and updates in the field of smart grids
• Annex 9: aspects of market design for power system flexibility

Chloe Yoon, of the KSGI Co-Secretariat gave a status report on the current Awards competition and schedule. She reported on the CEM 11 activities as well as the ISGAN Award of Excellence 2020 and gave an outlook on 2021.

Luciano Martini closed ExCo21, thanking all participants for their active participation and expressing his hope that soon physical meetings will be possible again. The members of the Presidium expressed their pleasure about the very successful meeting and the fact that AIT and KSGI will continue their work as ISGAN Co-Secretariats.

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Building on the successful ISGAN Knowledge Exchange in 2019, a follow-up project is now underway to capture recent developments and support countries in their development of regulatory sandboxes and related experimental instruments, which are key to enable up-scaling and deployment of smart grid and wider energy system innovation.

The focus of this project, involving 16 countries on four continents, is to share experiences and ideas between countries on how to maximise different aspects of learning from sandbox programmes. The process combines international knowledge exchange workshops with stakeholder dialogue at national level to customise the learning to specific contexts and preconditions in the participating countries. Focus questions include how sandbox programmes can be integrated into longer term energy transition strategies, the legal preconditions and exemption laws to enable sandbox programmes, how to coordinate between different stakeholders in programme implementation, and how to design evaluation processes for policy learning.

The second international workshop of the ISGAN Regulatory Sandbox 2.0 project was held on 15 March 2021, involving 30 experts from ministries, regulatory bodies, energy agencies and the research community in a highly interactive dialogue on country-specific as well as shared challenges and experiences.

Apart from concrete learning for the participating countries, the project will deliver concrete policy messages to the Clean Energy Ministerial meeting later this spring. The project results will also be disseminated widely through a public workshop arranged by the ISGAN Academy and a new ISGAN Casebook on Regulatory Sandboxes.

Intended audience

Academy members from the power systems and meteorological areas, forecasting services providers, renewable plant operators and market traders, and widely TSOs, DSOs and regulators.

Key messages

• RES are sensitive to high-frequency and very localized variations of the atmospheric flow (wind guts, cloud shadows, fog occcurrence etc.)

• Refining parameterizations used in NWP models is the first step to improve RES prediction
• Getting rid of these parameterizations, for instance using Large-Eddy Simulations (LES), is a promising venue because it allows to resolve most of these small-scale fluctuations

• The spectacular growth in computing power using GPUs now enable LES based weather prediction below 100m resolution. This is fine enough to resolve the effects of wind turbines, low clouds and turbulence.
• Using ensemble simulations translates atmospheric state inherent unpredictability into a probabilistic view
• The spectacular growth in computing power using GPUs now enable LES based weather prediction below 100m resolution. This is fine enough to resolve the effects of wind turbines, low clouds and turbulence.
• A fourth webinar scheduled in April will complete this webinar on Advanced weather forecasting for RES applications and present how observations data can be used, together with measurements from RES plants, as input to dedicated RES forecasting models to predict the power output of these plants.

Matthias Lange                              Remco Verzijlbergh         Quentin Libois

Intended audience:

• Transmission System Operators (TSOs)  
• Regional Security Coordinators (RSCs) 
• Market operators  
• Energy producers, traders and energy market actors 
• Policy makers and regulation bodies 
• Transmission and Distribution (T&D) equipment and services industry 
• Academia and engineering communities 

Anastasis Tzoumpas                Katerina Drivakou                    Thanasis Bachoumis

International collaboration is a powerful tool in understanding issues around flexibility market design. Understanding the implications of design decisions is greatly enhanced by access to insights from the widest possible range of existing markets and the ability to capture the whole spectrum of different market contexts, which will help generate a body of evidence that is rich and diverse in scope. It is foreseen that this body of evidence will in turn be useful to all partner countries in evaluating different architectures for their own systems.

The scope of this Annex is all aspects of market design for power system flexibility. This includes:

• the whole range of market timescales, from long term investment signals to second-to-second balancing and response;
• the whole physical system from large centralized generation to behind the meter sources of flexibility within domestic settings and interfaces with other vectors;
• all sources of value that flexibility conceivably could capture, going beyond MWh to include characteristics like voltage control, repeatability, inertia, locational constraint alleviation;
• and aspects of the market that go beyond the trading rules such as consumer support, or how obligations (such as with respect to grid stability) are understood and checked

The new operating agent will be Dr. Iliana Cardenes from the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

Beneficiaries of this Annex will be all ISGAN participants, the IEA and the Clean Energy Ministerial, colleagues working in related campaigns such as the Power Systems Flexibility Campaign and Mission Innovation, and any stakeholders involved in the design and operation of energy markets. These comprise government departments at supranational, national and sub-national level (including cities), as well as regulatory authorities, and potential market participants who are currently experiencing difficulties in getting flexibility to market.

Results will be made available in the form of webinars, workshops, publications (Policy briefs, white papers, etc.), scientific publications, presentations at conferences, and social-media facilitated peer-to-peer discussion groups.

Building on the successful ISGAN Knowledge Transfer Project (KTP) in 2019, involving more than 20 countries, and subsequent work on regulatory sandboxes in collaboration with ETIP-SNET, ISGAN is now starting a new initiative to deepen the learning and international exchange on this key topic for the energy transition.

Regulatory sandboxes and similar instruments are key to enable and accelerate upscaling and deployment of smart grid and energy system innovation. The project starts with an introductory webinar on 28 January 2021 and will conclude with the delivery of fresh insights and policy messages on regulatory sandboxes for advancement of smart grid solutions to the 12th Clean Energy Ministerial meeting in May 2021.

Please contact Helena Lindquist (helena[at]thelightswitch.se), Magnus Olofsson (magnus.olofsson[at]energiinstitutet.se) or Klaus Kubeczko (Klaus.Kubeczko[at]ait.ac.at) in the ISGAN Regulatory Sandboxes Project Team for more information.

As ISGAN enters its second decade, this meeting represents an important milestone for this Clean Energy Ministerial initiative and IEA Technology Collaboration Programme. The ExCo will consider ISGAN’s updated strategic plan as its prepares to submit the formal request for a third term (2022-2027).  The FY2021 Programmes of Work of all eight active ISGAN Annexes will be presented.  The results from the tendering process for a new Secretariat will be presented and the corresponding selection taken.  Breakout sessions will allow for more detailed discussions on core ISGAN themes and their definitions and on the next steps for cooperation with outside organisations. Lastly, the ExCo will discuss known and potential deliverables to the 12^th Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM12, June 2021) and other major events.

For any inquiry regarding the ISGAN and the ExCo21 meeting, please contact the ISGAN Secretariat at ISGAN@ait.ac.at.

Save the Date! The twelfth Clean Energy Ministerial hosted by the Government of Chile will be held in the week commencing 31 May 2021.

It will be a virtual event and will provide opportunities for the global CEM community to organize insightful, impactful clean energy events throughout the week.

Further details to follow in 2021.

The tender is set up as a competitive fixed price process, in which all off bids will be assessed against the selection criteria, while the total price for the two-year term should not exceed €380.000 incl. VAT.

The ISGAN Executive Committee therefore invites all suitably qualified organizations to submit a bid to serve as its Operating Agent and Executive Committee secretariat. Interested parties can file their application to Mr. Josef Ayoub, lead of the ISGAN OA/Secretariat Evaluation Team (josef.ayoub[at]canada.ca) by 22 January 2021, 14:00 hours local time CET.

Bids that are not compliant with the eligibility criteria contained in Section 3, such as exceeding the fixed price, must clearly identify areas of non-compliance and may be rejected.

As a participant in the full workshop, you will have the opportunity to learn from the latest findings on activities related to demonstrations taking place internationally. Through discussions and collaborative sessions, you will also have the change to contribute to a whitepaper highlighting concepts presented and encouraging future study implementation to provide support for effective policy development.

This workshop will be hosted in the following segments:

1. December 2020: Pre-recorded presentations are available on the ISGAN YouTube Channel for you to view online before attending the next workshop segments
2. January 13, 2021 from 14:00 – 16:30 CET / 8:00 – 10:30 EST / 18:30 – 21:00 IST: Join a live 2-hour online discussion amongst speakers and participants for a) Q&A session with the speaker and b) open group discussion for drafting the outline of a whitepaper that highlights the potential and encourages future study and implementation.
3. 2021/2022: Join an in-person (as circumstances allow) meeting with international ISGAN and annex 6 members as well as Canadian experts from the smart grids community, attached to another event in Canada will focus on finalizing and launching the whitepaper.

The online workshop is free of charge but we strongly encourage interested participants to register to receive reminders and updates as this workshop and its related deliverables progress.

List of Presentations:

Introductions

• Introduction to ISGAN Annex 6: Transmission and Distribution Systems – Joni Rossi, RISE / ISGAN Annex 6 Operating Agent (Sweden)

Theme A: Potential of Flexibility Resources

• Flexibility Potential in Local Energy Systems – Anjali Wadhera, Natural Resources Canada (Canada)

• Local Power Balancing for Advancing Power System Flexibility – Narayana Prasad Padhy, India Institute of Technology Roorkee (India)

Theme B: Bringing Flexibility Together

• IESO York Region Non Wires Alternatives Demonstration Project – Pat Lo,  Independent Electricity System Operator of Ontario (Canada)

• Transactive Electric Distribution System – Bala Venkatesh, Ryerson University (Canada)

• “Enabling flexibilities for future power systems: Synergies from EU and Canadian collaborative activities” by Magnus Andersson – IMCG Sweden, Anh Tuan Le – Chalmers University of Technology and Kankar Bhattacharya – University of Waterloo.

• Green Button and London Hydro Pilots – Syed Mir, London Hydro (Canada)

Theme C: Market Policies and Planning Approaches

• The Role of DSOs in a Decentralised Future – Randolf Brazier, Energy Networks Association (United Kingdom)

• Local Market Designs for Maximizing Social Benefits (Survey Results) – Orlando Valarezo, Universidad Pontificia Comillas (Spain)

• Why getting flexibility from distribution grids? Possible solutions and regulatory issues – Gianluigi Migliavacca, Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico (Italy)

Further information about the event will be distributed to the registered persons shortly before the event. For all enquiries regarding the event, please contact steven.wong[at]canada.ca or joni.rossi[at]ri.se.

This discussion paper identifies and consolidates the lessons learned from international projects, use cases, and best practices on TSO-DSO interaction. The results have been obtained from projects that are still in their early phases based on their preliminary findings as well as those that have reached their dissemination stages. Furthermore, this work aims to present a global view of developments of TSO-DSO interaction based on collaboration from stakeholders within the ISGAN community, as well as additional collaboration partners (TSOs, DSOs, project leaders, etc).

The main target audience is focused toward stakeholders who are familiar with the topic and will provide them with an overview and reference towards projects such that the lessons learned can be considered within future projects. The video provides a high-level overview which encapsulates the main findings, while this report forms a supplementary consolidation of the results in order to provide additional information in more detail.

Intended audience

• Decision-makers from the energy sector and the power system industry (operators of power systems, energy producers, market regulators, energy traders, etc.)
• Senior engineers with experience in renewable energy or statistics / data science
• Data providers, data science companies, grid operators
• RES traders
• Academia, Regulation bodies

Liyang Han                               Ricardo Bessa

The rationale for the workshop was based on the assumption that the knowledge and experience from developments nationally – both at policy level and in practice – could be captured in a more systematic way to inform and influence dialogue at the international level, whilst at the same time opening up for involvement from a greater number and a more diverse set of stakeholders to create a more holistic picture of challenges and solutions.

Figure. Illustration of the potential for increased interaction and flow of knowledge.

The workshop was arranged to discuss and co-create ideas on how this could be achieved in practice in various areas of work within the ISGAN community.
Among the recommendations from the workshop is a new role as connector between the international and national level in each country. In addition, make use of national mirror groups in connection to ISGAN projects. It was also emphasized that web meetings including the services of the ISGAN Academy are important tools for stronger connection between the international and national levels.

At the 20th meeting of the ISGAN Executive Committee, Annex 6 ‘Power Transmission & Distribution Systems’ hosted a side event that showcased its recent work.

Firstly, the key messages of Annex 6 were presented, giving an overview of its four main focus areas and summarising the collaboration of its network of international experts.

Each of the focus areas is assigned to a focus area leader in charge of facilitating and consolidating the Annex’ work in accordance with its the objectives. Key messages of the Annex’ work were elaborated, based on three main perspectives:

1. Drivers for change according to generation, grid, and demand
2. Resulting consequences caused by increased challenges of maintaining secure operation and reliable long-term planning of the Power Transmission and Distribution System
3. Needs to ensure sustainability and security of supply, highlighting future requirements and adaptations with respect to technology, market innovations and policy

Secondly, the outcome of the Annex’ work on the topic ‘MEGA vs micro grids’ and related trends influencing the development of the power system was also presented.

In this regard, an overview of the respective grids and their topology was discussed. From the perspective of investment, it was shown that flexibility needs to consider energy in both time and space, due to the integration of a significant amount of RES. In both cases, MEGA and micro grids are able to integrate RES based on the maximization of local RES and optimization of system-wide energy resources respectively.

Furthermore, the activity contributed toward the policy brief distributed to the virtual CEM meeting. For further information please see:

• ISGAN website: http://www.iea-isgan.org/micro-vs-mega-grids/
• Policy brief distributed to the virtual CEM meeting: http://www.cleanenergyministerial.org/initiative-clean-energy-ministerial/international-smart-grid-action-network

Lastly, the outcome of the activity ‘Lessons learned from international projects on TSO-DSO interaction’ was presented. A video clip provided a high-level overview of the topic, in line with four key questions, consolidating the challenges, successes, lessons learned, and recommendations based on the experience of various projects on TSO-DSO interaction.

ISGAN’s strategy and work programme for 2020 and beyond were a centerpiece of discussions, in addition the proposal of a new Annex. Annex 9 will focus on Flexibility Markets, their development and implementation, and will be headed by Operating Agent Iliana Cardenes, of the United Kingdom’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

ISGAN is also proud to announce Brazil as its newest Contracting Party, and would like to thank Cyro Vicente Boccuzzi, President of the Latin American Smart Grid Forum for his support throughout this process.

Moreover, Israel is highly interested in joining our ranks and was represented by Yael Harman, Head of Technology and Renewable Energy of the Israeli Ministry of Energy, who took part as an observer.

To further ISGAN’s international cooperation, representatives from other TCPs were invited to the meeting: Stefan Nowak, Chair of the IEA Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (PVPS) and Paul Lucchese, Chair of the IEA Hydrogen Technology Collaboration Program (HTCP),  who shared insights into the work of their TPCs and possible areas of cooperation with ISGAN. Furthermore, the meeting was complemented by presentations from the IEA and CEM Secretariat.

On Day 3 of the ExCo meeting, ISGAN Annex 6: Power Transmission & Distribution Systems hosted a side event showcasing the recent work done within the Annex. More details here.

Another side event was organized by the ISGAN KTP Team and focused on experiences from various projects and work within ISGAN’s Annexes. The challenge addressed in this workshop were the barriers for knowledge flow and engagement between stakeholders at national level with the international level, and vice versa. More details here.

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10th Nov 2020 @ 14:00 CEST

Duration: 1 hour

The targeted audience of the webinar is:

The intended audience from in this webinar includes: academy members from the power systems area and industry players also from power systems including TSOs, DSOs, policy makers, regulators, research centers and associations focused in grid management and grid planning.

Key messages:

Flexibility plays a key-role in the decarbonisation of power systems and in increasing the involvement of end-users through the creation of innovative demand-side services.

INTERPRETER will develop an open-source interoperable grid management solution consisting of a set of 10 software applications for an optimal design, planning, operation and maintenance of the electricity grid, with a special focus on the distribution network.

ATTEST aims to develop a secure ICT platform that integrates a set of optimization tools for operating, planning and managing assets of power systems.

INTERRFACE aims to create a common architecture that connects market platforms to establish a seamless pan-European electricity exchange linking wholesale and retail markets and allows all electricity market players to trade and procure energy services in a transparent, non-discriminatory way.

André Guimarães                                                George Boultadakis             Hans Bludszuweit

6th Nov 2020 @ 14:00 CEST

Duration: 1 hour

The targeted audience of the webinar is:

Academy members, from the power systems area and industry players also from power systems including TSOs, DSOs, policy makers, regulators, research centers and associations focused in grid management and grid planning.  

Key messages:

Flexibility plays a key-role in the decarbonisation of power systems (e.g. by promoting the integration of DER or enabling new TSO/DSO coordination strategies) and RD&I projects contribute to the European leadership in the power system industry by developing related solutions. 

INTERPRETER will develop an open-source interoperable grid management solution consisting of a set of 10 software applications for an optimal design, planning, operation and maintenance of the electricity grid, with a special focus on the distribution network. 

FlexPlan aims at establishing a new grid planning methodology considering the opportunity to introduce new storage and flexibility resources in electricity transmission and distribution grids as an alternative to building new grid elements. 

CoordiNet aims to demonstrate how DSOs and TSOs by acting in a coordinated manner can provide favourable cooperation conditions to all actors while removing barriers to participation for customers and small market players connected to distribution networks 

Nuno Amaro                                Gianluigi Migliavacca                                  José Pablo Chaves

ISGAN proudly looks back at numerous highlights and achievements in 2019. The activities of ISGAN are organized in Annexes. In contrast to other IEA TCPs, these Annexes are standing working groups that continuously work on Smart Grids-related topics and regularly update their plans and objectives for the upcoming year at the spring meetings of the Executive Committee.

Of particular importance were events and workshops which attracted a very high level of interest both within ISGAN and externally.

• Activities during CEM 10
  • ISGAN and Mission Innovation (MI) Innovation Challenge 1 on Smart Grids (IC1) co-organized the first joint CEM/ISGAN/MI IC1 forum on Cooperation to Accelerate Smart Grid Market Uptake , a full-day  CEM10/MI-4 side event on 29 May 2019 at the Vancouver convention center. There, ministers from over 25 countries gathered to accelerate progress toward a clean energy future.
  • Award ceremony announcing the winning project of the 2019 ISGAN Award of Excellence.
• Highly recognized public workshops back-to-back with ExCo meetings
  • Stockholm: Public Workshop in cooperation with the Swedish Energy Agency and the Swedish Smart Grid Forum: “The future of electricity markets in a low carbon economy”, 2 April 2019.
  • Stockholm: Interdisciplinary workshop with IEA DHC TS3 and ISGAN
  • Montreux: Public Workshop “Needs, challenges and opportunities of TSO-DSO coordination”
  • Montreux: Open workshop “EERA Smart Grid/SIRFN workshop”
  • Annex 6: Open workshop “Micro vs MEGA grids – trends influencing the development of the power system
• Thematic knowledge exchange events (KTP)
  • Experimental Sandboxes for Smart Grids, Stockholm, 2019, in cooperation with the Swedish Smart Grids Forum and ICER International Confederation of Energy Regulators. This event was cooperatively organized by ISGAN Annexes 2, 4, 7 and 8.
  • Focus on upscaling, Montreux, 2019. This project was the third in the series of KTP workshops concerning public funding. It was organized by Annex 2 and 4.
• Development of a communication strategy and action plan
• Public Support to Smart Grid RD&I
• Development of a web-based tool using a combination of CBA and multi-criteria analysis

More details on ISGAN activities in the past year can be read in the full report available online and in print versions.

Disclaimer

This report was prepared by the Secretariat of the International Smart Grid Action Network (ISGAN). ISGAN is organized as the Implementing Agreement for a Co-operative Programme on Smart Grids and operates under the framework of Technology Collaboration Programmes created by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of any of ISGAN’s participants, any of their sponsoring governments or organizations, the IEA Secretariat, or any of its member countries. No warranty is ex-pressed or implied, no legal liability or responsibility assumed for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, and no representation made that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring.

ISGAN and PSF reinforce their commitment to collaborate to accelerate smart digital power infrastructure

The first ISGAN-PSF joint workshop “A Holistic Approach to Low Emission Energy Systems through the Sector Integration”, took place as an official pre-event of the CEM11/MI-5 Ministerial meeting on Wednesday 16 September.

This workshop benefited from the participation of key contributors, including Mr. Juan Carlos Jobet (Minister of Energy, Chile), Mr. Gilberto Dialuce (Director-General, Ministry of Economic Development, Italy), Mr. Keisuke Sadamori (Office for Energy Market and Security Director, International Energy Agency), and Mrs. Anne Vadasz Nilsson (Chairman, Swedish Energy Markets Inspectorate), who gathered with delegates from governments and industries to express their thoughts, opinions, and perspectives in a collaborative environment for advancing digitalization and new technologies for enhancing power system flexibility.

Mr. Luciano Martini, Chair of ISGAN, and Mr. Enrique Gutierrez, Operating Agent of PSF, announced the strong cooperation of the initiatives they represent, targeting the development of innovation on flexibility, digitalization, regulatory frameworks, and market design of the future smart grids.

On behalf of the CEM11 pre-event organizers (ISGAN and PSF), we invite you to the ISGAN-PSF joint workshop “A holistic approach to low emission energy systems through the sector integration” on Wednesday 16 September, 14:30 – 16:00 CET (15:30 -17:00 Riyadh).

Clean Energy Ministerial 11 (CEM11) hosted this year by Saudi Arabia, will be entirely virtual and open to all via live webcast.
​
This workshop will bring together ongoing and upcoming CEM work from various perspectives, looking at power system integration enabled by digitalization and new technologies for power system flexibility – such as electric mobility and distributed storage. The focus of the discussion will be on key policy support, including market design, multi-stakeholder coordination, cross-sectoral approaches. From CEM, this includes the Power System Flexibility Campaign, the International Smart Grid Action Network (ISGAN) and the work of the Horizontal Accelerator for EV Integration. Also, during the event, the winning projects of the Sixth ISGAN Award of Excellence will be announced. (Please find more details in the attached PDF file.)

​
* How to join the event:

Please visit the CEM11-MI5 event website and register www.cem-mi-saudi2020.sa. You will be sent an access code the platform which will let you log in to the virtual conference, select your avatar to wander around the virtual venue, go to the chat room to network, and go to your side event room.

The session will be broadcast live through this link also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS6IyRgUutY&feature=youtu.be 

Online workshop “Testing Methods and Certification Protocols”

Will take place on 15 October 2020.

SIRFN will present its advanced work on testing and validation of smart grid systems. The following topics will be covered:

• automated testing of distributed generators
• holistic validation considerations of energy systems
• validations procedures of microgrid functions
• modern laboratory testing technologies.

Further information about the event will be distributed to the registered persons shortly before the event.
For all enquiries regarding the event, please contact sirfn[at]der-lab.net.

When: 9 Sep 2020 @ 14:00 CEST

Duration: 1 hour

Targeted audience: Policy makers, grid operators (TSO, DSO), junior engineers and students, senior engineers.

Presenters:

Gianluigi Migliavacca (RSE)                             Andrei Morch (SINTEF)

Download the Roadmap Brochure here.

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Specifically, the partnership seeks to: 

• exchange in a structured way the respective knowledge-base, in order to grasp greater awareness of the needs of energy system’s final users and society at large, from diverse geographic perspectives;
• promote more efficient efforts in technical-scientific R&D, targeting both short- and long-term solutions for power system stakeholders and customers;
• facilitate insights of present energy transition and forthcoming global trends, for shaping the future of energy systems effectively integrating new technologies, processes and services;
• to support the respective Working Groups with experts’ contributions, through sharing state-of-the-art advancements in policy approaches, technologies and processes;
• elaborate joint deliverables on topics of common interest, with the aim to enrich the Smart Grid progress.

With ETIP SNET’s pan-European footprint, a wide stakeholder representation including industry associations (grid operators, utilities and storage, manufacturers, ICT providers) and a technical-scientific orientation to R&D planning and monitoring in the wide area of energy systems and ISGAN’s international footprint spanning all continents and a mainly public membership base (governmental energy agencies, Research Centers and Universities) it is foreseen that a fruitful cooperation can be achieved in several areas including: Flexibility and resilience in power systems, High variable RES and DER integration, Integration among power system and other energy sectors, Holistic grids architectures, grid developments and system planning, Smart grids operations and economics, Digitalization and interoperability of smart grids components and processes, TSO-DSO coordination in operation and planning and Data exchange architecture, protocols, and cybersecurity.

For more information on ETIP SNET please visit: https://www.etip-snet.eu/

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A special thank you goes to German ExCo representative, Ralf Eickhoff, for his efforts in organizing a physical meeting in Berlin. Unfortunately, ISGAN was forced to cancel the physical 19^th ExCo meeting planned for March 2020 due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic across Europe.

However, ISGAN succeeded in finding a quick solution and hosted a first web meeting on 24 March, where the most urgent matters were discussed. The 19^th ExCo meeting itself took place in the form of a two-day online meeting on 19-20 May 2020.

ISGAN welcomed to the meeting the new Head of Secretariat for the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM), Dan Dorner, and wishes him success in his new position.

The Operating Agents of the active Annexes reported to the ISGAN Executive Committee on the progress of ongoing work and planned activities.

• Annex2: Case Books dedicated to outstanding smart grid applications
• Annex 3: Tools for the assessment of present smartness of electricity networks
• Annex 4: Organization of knowledge, key issues, insightful analysis for decision makers
• Annex 5: SIRFN . Smart grid research and testing facilities, test beds and protocols
• Annex 6: Improve understanding of smart grid technologies
• Annex 7: Governance and socio-technical issues associated with smart grids deployment
• Annex 8: ISGAN Academy – Continuous training on technical skills and updates in the field of smart grids

Regarding ISGAN’s strategy and work programme for 2020 and beyond, Iliana Cardenes, leader of the Incubator Team, and Andrew Stokes presented the results of their work. The main finding is that there is high interest for a new activity within ISGAN, focussed on joint markets and flexibility.

The main achievements of the ExCo19 meeting are:

• The Executive Committee agreed to the extension of the primary ISGAN theme of flexibility and the supporting themes of digitalization, resilience and interoperability through FY 2020.
• Several activities are planned in order to update ISGAN’s strategy and structure for the Request for Extension (RfE) process:
  • Creation of a dedicated RfE team
  • Self-assessment of the existing Annexes and in-depth discussions in workshops
  • Continuation of the Incubator team exploring the interest and necessity for having a new Annex on flexibility markets within ISGAN

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micro and MEGA represent two trends which largely influence the decisions and the evolutionary process of power grids.

The trends are both aimed at enabling very high penetration of renewable energy sources
in the electric power system, from two perspectives:

• micro focuses on local solutions, while
• MEGA focuses on system or even intra-system wide solutions

ISGAN Annex 6 has dedicated an activity to study the micro and the MEGA trends, with the objective to present a critical assessment of these trends, based on the questions:

• Does one trend outcompete the other?
• Does increased investments from one perspective increase the need for investments
  from the other perspective?
• To what extent can one perspective benefit from the other perspective?

The intention is not to proclaim one solution being superior to another, rather to provide well
informed insights to the needs of considering both perspectives during the planning
and decision-making process for the sustainable development of the wider energy
system.

The outcome of this activity are communicated through publications, presentations and workshops, with contributions from a large number of parties:

• In the Policy Brief: micro vs MEGA – trends in power system development, the condensed knowledge from this activity was published for the 11th Clean Energy Ministerial hosted by Saudi Arabia, September 2020

• In the Discussion Paper (DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.11569.61287), the full report is provided from this activity, including detailed insights into the micro & MEGA trends and their perspectives together with experiences from around the World.

• Workshop and meeting in Montreux
  A highly successful event, gathering a total of 30 participants, with presentations (available here) from Italy, India, Spain, Belgium, France, Germany, Norway and Sweden.
  The participants at these two meeting days have shown a high level of engagement and it has been highly valuable to learn from each other. In short, we can conclude that these meetings were very productive and successful in gathering a large amount of knowledge.

Due to the increased penetration of renewable energy sources (RES), numerous DSOs are experiencing challenges such as network violations, reverse power flow and increased network instability. Various smart grid tools and functions have been developed in order to support the integration of these flexibilities for the planning and operations of electrical networks. The change in the energy paradigm also paves the way to the emergence of new actors (such as aggregators) and new behaviors (such as the active participation of prosumers or industrial customers), offering DSO plausible alternatives to costly network reinforcements when combined with proper operational tools. The pooling of the flexibility of loads or generators located in the distribution network through Virtual Power Plants (VPP) can also contribute significantly to the provision of new balancing services for Transmission System Operators (TSO) and Balancing Responsible Parties (BRP) which create a necessity for the DSO to validate and coordinate such operations. This enables the DSOs to become market facilitators. Advanced forecasting algorithms, such as predictive maintenance, traffic light systems (TLS) and load/RES forecasts, are receiving increased attention such that they can be integrated in real conditions by network operators. The smart grid functions developed and demonstrated in the InteGrid project falls within the scope of the two main use cases: Operational planning of medium-voltage (MV) distribution networks and Distributed monitoring and control of low-voltage (LV) networks.

Based on the implementation of these smart grid functions within the pilot projects located at three demo sites in Slovenia, Portugal and Sweden, the following key questions remains:

• How will these functions perform during network conditions when there is an increase in RES within the network or when applied to different networks?
• What will happen if in the future the quantity of RES is scaled-up significantly or if the solution is deployed in another network area with a high penetration of RES?
• Is the performance of the smart tool affected by large scale-up implementation?
• Is the telecommunication network infrastructure able to support the increase of renewables and still performs correctly?
• What are the associated costs and their impact in future scenarios in such solutions?
• Is the current regulation mature enough to enable new concepts and attract new business models, or does the regulation need to change drastically?

To answer these questions, it is fundamental for network operators and technology providers to assess the functional behavior of the tools before they are deployed at large scale within their networks. Therefore, it is necessary to perform a scalability and replicability analysis (SRA) which aims to analyse the impact of future scenarios applied to current networks by identifying potential drivers, barriers and constraints of such deployment. Therefore, the SRA aims to bridge the gap between the demonstration of a technical or business use case in a pilot project and a prior large-scale roll-out by network operators, independent aggregators or retailers, to ensure a correct performance.

Join and register free here

More info on INTEGRID project here.

5 jun 2020 @ 14:00 CEST

Duration: 1 hour

The targeted audience of the webinar is:

• decision-makers from the energy sector and and the power system industry (operators of power systems, energy producers, market regulators, energy traders, etc.)
• senior engineers with experience in renewable energy or statistics / data science.

Key messages of webinar:

• Collaborative forecasts enable the distributed optimization of energy transactions by multiple actors of power systems, yielding value through data markets while preserving data privacy.
• High-resolution forecasts give tailored information on the uncertainty of RES production sites, thanks to advanced weather predictions and cutting-edge data science.
• Artificial Intelligence teams up with human expertise to exploit the big data available on RES production and power systems to optimize decision-making for market applications and grid management.
• Synergies between RES and storage systems are optimized and validated in practice on various contexts, from a large RES power plant to an entire isolated power system.

George Kariniotakis                 Pierre Pinson

On 21-22 April 2020, the accelerator gathered some 70 international experts from 17 countries across four continents for a two-day interactive workshop on the theme Electric Vehicle and Power Systems Nexus: How to support large-scale adoption and effective integration? The COVID-19 called for arranging a virtual workshop. To enable interaction and knowledge exchange between experts ahead of, during and after the workshop as well as transparent project documentation of results, a digital open innovation platform was set up for use by all participants.

The Horizontal Accelerator represents a concerted effort to unify existing CEM workstreams to produce coherent analysis, conclusions and advice that leverage the singular expertise and outreach of each initiative and campaign. This focused and multi-disciplinary approach to EVs offers new insights into power system integration and sector coupling, guiding the development of a modern and integrated energy system of the future.

Project participants consist of a transdisciplinary group of international experts and sector stakeholders from different levels of government, research and industry with complementary knowledge and insights into the EV – power system nexus.

The insights from the workshop and complementary project activities are now being analysed by experts from the collaborating CEM work streams. The results from this first phase of the Horizontal Accelerator will be presented at the 11th Clean Energy Ministerial meeting and will also inform the IEA-coordinated Global EV Outlook Report and the Status of Power System Transformation Report.

Clean Energy Ministerial, 21st Century Power Partnership (21CPP) , Electric Vehicle Initiative (EVI),  Power System Flexibility (PSF) Campaign.

Presenters:

Ricardo Prata                             Rafael Cossent                          Ricardo Bessa

Apr 23, 2020 02:00 PM in Brussels

Duration: 1h

Smart grid initiatives generate wide range impacts which are not captured by the traditional monetary analysis.

Broader and more general assessment tools are required for estimating the actual smart grid potential.

The use of an approach which combines the Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) for the monetary impacts and the Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) for non-monetary impacts is promising to increase the accuracy of the assessment of smart grid initiatives.

As a part of ISGAN activities, the smartgrideval software is proposed a as decision support tool in the context of smart grid assessment.

Fabrizio Pilo                 Matteo Troncia

Unfortunately ISGAN had to cancel the 19th ExCo meeting in March on very short-notice due to the tense situation caused by the Sars-CoV-2 virus. However, ISGAN was able to find a solution and a web meeting on March 24^th for urgent matters will be organised. The 19th ExCo meeting itself will be postponed to May. ISGAN Presidium and Secretariat hope that this new date will suit as many delegates as possible.

ISGAN invites to the 19th ISGAN Executive Committee of the International Smart Grid Action Network online on 19 – 20 May 2020.

27 Feb 2020 @ 14:00 CET

Duration: 1h

In this webinar it will discuss the need to model coupled energy systems in a single framework and we will introduce encoord’s Scenario Analysis Interface for Energy Systems (SAInt), a software application to model, plan, and operate coupled energy networks.

Dr. Carlo Brancucci                Dr. Kwabena Pambour

Thursday, December 5th, 2019 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM CET

The CoordiNet project aims at demonstrating how Distribution System Operators (DSO) and Transmission System Operators (TSO) shall act in a coordinated manner to procure and activate grid services in the most reliable and efficient way through the implementation of three large-scale demonstrations. The CoordiNet project is centred around three key objectives:

1. To demonstrate to which extent coordination between TSO/DSO will lead to a more economic, more reliable and more environmentally friendly electricity supply to the consumers through the implementation of three demonstrations at large scale, in cooperation with market participants.
2. To define and test a set of standardized products and the related key parameters for grid services, including the reservation and activation process for the use of the assets and finally the settlement process.
3. To specify and develop a TSO-DSO-Consumers cooperation platform starting with the necessary building blocks for the demonstration sites. These components will pave the way for the interoperable development of a pan-European market that will allow all market participants to provide energy services and opens up new revenue streams for consumers providing grid services.

In total, eight demo activities will be carried out in three different countries, namely Greece, Spain, and Sweden.

Speakers:

During the ExCo meeting, side events of various Annexes took place, which did not only attract great attention within ISGAN but also from external experts.

At this 18^th meeting of the Executive Committee of ISGAN, Chairwoman Karin Widegren stepped down from her position and Luciano Martini, former Vice-Chair, was elected as her successor.

The ISGAN community thanked Karin for her tremendous efforts and acknowledged her sage counsel and dedicated leadership, tireless commitment inspiration to colleagues and young professionals, and overall cheer in fulfilling her duties. The Executive Committee presented the ISGAN Achievement Award to her.

The 18^th ExCo meeting also focused on strategy issues that ranged from re-organising the Annex structure, boosting ISGAN’s activities in digitalisation and interoperability as well as stepping-up ISGAN’s task-sharing efforts.

• Reorganisation of Annexes
  • A proposal for the adaptation and reorganization of the Annex structure in ISGAN was developed.
  • ISGAN Annexes will be asked to perform a self-assessment until the next ExCo meeting (taking place in March, 2020 in Berlin, Germany)
• Establishment of the Incubator Team
  • Focus on new developments concerning digitalization and interoperability
  • Preparation of a knowledge-base for decision-making: Should new topics be included in the work of ISGAN? And if so, how?
• Increased task-sharing efforts
  • Definition of a path forward to deepen and widen participation in ISGAN’s activities, in order to make its output more relevant to policy makers.
  • Issues concerning the goal of becoming an organization based on task-sharing; how to re-engage inactive members in Annex work; and possible further steps were discussed.
  • Continuous self-assessment of Annexes should also contribute to address these issues.
• Market definitions: A topic-oriented session focused on the clarification of market definitions in relation to ISGAN engagement. The aim of the session was to review and clarify the differences of the multi-layered definitions for the term “market” in the context of grid modernization, digitalization, and smart grids.

The next meeting of the Executive Committee of ISGAN will take place in March in Berlin, Germany. The mentioned topics will be continued during the next meeting.

Link to previous Newsletters

On the 03-10-2019 the Swiss Federal Office of Energy SFOE and Research Center for Energy Networks – ETH Zürich in cooperation with ISGAN Annex 6 (Power Transmission & Distribution Systems) hosted a public workshop on needs, challenges and opportunities of TSO-DSO coordination in Montreux, Switzerland.

An introduction to the workshop demonstrated how there has been a paradigm shift in the electrical supply industry, where the traditional characteristics of centralized generation, fixed loads, and uni-directional power flow have transformed into systems which are decentralized, controllable and incorporate bi- directional power flow. This shift toward distributed and renewable electricity poses as a challenge to both the TSO and DSO and thus there has been an increasing awareness relating to the needs, challenges and opportunities associated with the implementation of the necessary solutions. Successful TSO-DSO coordination requires the consideration of various perspectives of the technical, market and regulatory aspects in order to maximize the potential benefits provided by DERs, this includes congestion relief, reactive power and voltage control and frequency reserves.

An overview of International Activities on TSO-DSO interaction extending from 2014 to 2019 was provided. Since the results of various projects relating to TSO-DSO interaction are starting to become available, investigations are currently being conducted on the ‘Lessons learned on international projects on TSO-DSO interaction’ which will consolidate the outcomes of these projects and will be available in 2020. This deliverable will take the form of an interview style video, in which various stakeholders are invited to participate. A sneak preview of the video was shown at the workshop and received a positive response from the audience.

Additionally, some highlights of the workshops included a summary of TSO-DSO report which focused on the TSO-DSO interaction in congestion management and balancing. The drive for increased in TSO-DSO interaction was also emphasized in countries such as Ireland, where a target for 75% power generation from non-synchronous machines is to be achieved and raises the question as to ‘who’ is responsible for providing the necessary reactive power in order to achieve this goal. Further information into the development of business use cases which enable the TSO-DSO coordination was also presented. An interesting analogy between the power system and the human body showed that, it is necessary to ensure the optimal health of the power system which often requires a systematic behavioral change. In this regard, it has become evident that demand side management plays an important role in terms of market related aspects and that sufficient incentives for optimization should be introduced when it comes to DER flexibility.

The panel discussion incorporated a Q&A session received a constructive response. The presenters from the previous discussion were available for further questions and discussion.

Antony Zegers, AIT-Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH Austria, Tony Hearne (ESB Networks), Ireland, Gonca Gürses (RWTH Aachen), Germany, Andreas Beer (Repower AG), Switzerland, Markus Imhof (Swissgrid AG), Switzerland, Alexander Fuchs, ETH Zürich, Switzerland,
Moderator: Dr Turhan Demiray (ETH Zürich) , Switzerland

The workshop, organised by SIRFN (Smart Grid International Research Facility Network), ISGAN, Clean Energy Ministerial, DERlab, EERA – The European Energy Research Alliance JP Smart Grids, Mission Innovation and International Energy Agency (IEA) Energy Technology Network gathered representatives to discuss about the opportunities of Energy System Digitalization.

Within an international group of experts, a joint analysis of the scope of research and future needs was achieved. The requirements for developing and validating the Digitalization of Smart Grids based on data collection, AI and Blockchain methods, research and validation to support market decisions and the importance of Microgrids and Smart Communities were addressed and jointly affirmed to set further accents.

In conjunction with the ISGAN Executive Committee nine member countries (Austria, Belgium, Germany, India, Korea, Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Sweden) participated in an interactive knowledge sharing workshop on the topic of Upscaling of Smart Grid Research and Innovation.

The workshop was an integral part of a longer knowledge transfer process and was preceded by considerable preparation by the participants, including an in-depth questionnaire and a preparatory webinar providing important background context about upscaling barriers and initiatives in different countries. The interactive knowledge sharing and co-creation dialogue focused on how key barriers (economic, legal, technological, social, etc.) to upscaling can be overcome and the role of government actors, such as public funding agencies, in this regard.

The insights from the project have been summarised in the following ISGAN Policy Messages on Upscaling of Smart Grid Research and Innovation.

This knowledge transfer project on upscaling was the third under the umbrella initiative “Public Support to Smart Grid Research and Innovation” (2017-2019) in which countries have come together to share knowledge and experiences on aspects related to public funding and other support mechanisms relevant to smart grid development.