In May 2018 the project will start with data gathering and analysis of national approaches, forming a common factual basis, preparing for an interactive KTP workshop taking place in Vienna in conjunction with the ISGAN ExCo meeting.

Building upon the results of the Knowledge Transfer Project (KTP) on Public Support to Smart Grid Research, Development and Innovation in 2017, involving six ISGAN countries, a follow-up project is now about to commence that aims to dive deeper into a few of the prioritized topics identified.

It will be the 4^th KTP project within ISGAN since the concept was piloted in partnership with the Ministry of Energy (SENER) and the 21^st Century Power Partnership (21CPP) in Mexico 2016. The KTP concept emphasizes needs-based learning and sharing amongst peers and is involves highly interactive workshops as well as analytical preparatory work on part of participants.

The project primarily targets government funding agencies working on a daily basis on the design and implementation of funding programs to support smart grid development at national or regional level.

In May 2018 the project will start with data gathering and analysis of national approaches, forming a common factual basis, preparing for an interactive KTP workshop taking place 18-19 October 2018 in Vienna, Austria, in conjunction with the ISGAN ExCo meeting.

For more information about the project and how to get involved, please contact the ISGAN Secretariat at isgan(at)ait.ac.at or Magnus Olofsson, KTP lead, ISGAN Annex 2, at magnus.olofsson(at)energiinstitutet.se .

The brochure covers on the one side the key accomplishments and the contracting parties of ISGAN but also the objective, value proposition and organizational structure of ISGAN. In particular, the brochure also provides a one-page overview of the objectives and current activities for each individual Annex.

Blockchain has the potential to transform the functioning of a wide range of industries. Its features can increase transparency and traceability, facilitate market access and improve the efficiency of transactions. Fulfilling blockchain’s potential, however, depends on the integrity of the processes and requires adequate policies and measures to unleash this potential while addressing the risks of misuse. Governments and the international community will play a significant role in shaping policy and regulatory frameworks that are aligned with the emerging challenges and foster transparent, fair and stable markets as a basis for the use of blockchain.

The OECD Blockchain Policy Forum is the first major international conference to take stock of blockchain’s impacts across the full range of government activities and public priorities. The Forum will address the benefits and risks of blockchain for our economies and societies, begin to identify good policy and regulatory approaches, and investigate uses in specific policy areas. The OECD will welcome over 400 senior decision-makers from the public and private sectors, experts, academics and other stakeholders for these landmark discussions. Participants will focus on:

• Blockchain’s potential global economic impact

• Implications on privacy and cybersecurity

• Using blockchain to enhance inclusiveness

• Using blockchain to promote green growth and sustainability

• Using blockchain to strengthen governance and enforcement practices

For more information: http://www.oecd.org/

(ISGAN Chair Karin Widegren and Claire Henly, Managing Director from the Energy Web Foundation and moderator of the energy session)

The Forum gathered more than 1000 senior decision makers from the privat and public sector, experts academics and other stakeholders persons and an interesting fact presented was that outside the financial sector energy has been the second largest investment sector for blockchain applications with distributed production and peer to peer trading.

(Presentation of Karin Widegren: “Blockchain in the Energy Domain – Regulatory Perspectives”)

Speakers

Dr. Fabrizio Pilo 

Dr. Matteo Troncia (UNICA)

13 Jun 2018 @ 14:00 CEST

The Swedish Minister for Energy Ibrahim Baylan took part in the event, organized as a high-level panel discussion, bringing together key stakeholders and policy experts from the private sector, IEA and CEM member countries. The influence of market design on smart grid deployment in an international context involving opportunities on both the local/decentralized and the regional/interconnected level was in focus for the discussion.

You will find the agenda for the side event here

The high-level panel discussion was preceded by a full day workshop on Thursday 23. The highly interactive dialogue during the workshop was using a draft policy brief distributed in advance to the participants as a starting point for the discussions on how to accelerate the implementation of smart grid solutions. The outcome and recommendations from the workshop resulted in a concrete list of recommendations which was forwarded to the participants in the side event together with the final version of the policy brief.

You will find the agenda for the workshop here

Policy brief “Opportunities to Accelerate Smart Grid Deployment through Innovative Market Design”

Recommendations from the workshop

(please see also the workshop report: Policy Brief and Workshop Summary)

Global Recognition

On June 24, 2018, ISGAN, in partnership with the Global Smart Grid Federation (GSGF), announced the winners of the fourth annual ISGAN Award of Excellence, during a special ceremony at the Ninth Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM9) in Copenhagen, Denmark. Ibrahim Baylan, the Swedish Minister for Policy Coordination and Energy, presented the ISGAN Award to the winning projects.

The ISGAN Award of Excellence international competition showcases leadership and innovation in smart grid projects around the world. The 2018 ISGAN Award of Excellence recognizes exemplars in the field of smart grids with a special focus on “flexibility” that will advance smart grids by improving the flexibility of the grid by balancing supply and demand simultaneously, thereby reducing customer losses from power disruptions.

▣ Awards Competition Official Rules

▣ Frequently Asked Questions

▣ Awards Fact Sheet

▣ Awards Brochure

Theme for 2018

Excellence in Smart Grids for Flexibility

Competition at a Glance

For the fourth Annual ISGAN Award of Excellence competition, a wide range of smart grid project nominations were received, representing projects from 10 different countries throughout the world. The winning projects were selected by an independent, international jury of smart grid experts, led by Reji Pillai Kumar, Executive Director of the Global Smart Grid Federation (GSGF). The jury selected the winning projects based on the following four criteria: potential impact, economic rationale, potential for replication and adaptation, innovation and other benefits.

Competition Result

The 2018 ISGAN Award of Excellence, which focused on “Smart Grids for Flexibility,” was awarded to Sustainable Energy’s Coordinating Power Control, from Sweden.

Six other projects were also honored with the title “Finalists”: Smart Grid Deployment Project, from Korea, and Smart Operator–Efficient control and monitoring of the low voltage grid, from Germany, SysDL 2.0 – Ancillary services from large-area distribution grids, from Germany, Local Energy System with Customer Flexibility, from Sweden, OpenADR4Chile, from Italy, and Instability Detector of the Gaspésie Regional Power System: DIR-Gaspésie (CGART-ALGORES), from Canada.

EON’s Local Energy System with Customer Flexibility was also honored with the GSGF Best Smartgrid Project Award, which recognized its excellence of replication.

Winning Projects

	Coordinating power control Sustainable Energy (Sweden)
	Smart Grid Demonstration Project Korea Electric Power Corporation (Korea)
	Smart Operator – Efficient control and monitoring of the low voltage grid Innogy SE (Germany)
	SysDL 2.0 – Ancillary services from large-area distribution grids DREWAG NETZ GmbH (Germany)
	Local Energy System with Customer Flexibility  EON Energidistribution AB (Sweden)
	OpenADR4Chile Enel SpA (Italy)
	Instability Detector of the Gaspésie Regional Power System: DIR-Gaspésie (CGART-ALGORES) Hydro-Quebec Research Institute (IREQ) (Canada)
Recognizing the excellence of replication	Local Energy System with Customer Flexibility EON Energidistribution AB (Sweden)

With this, we are pleased to inform you that ISGAN booklet for CEM9 is now available for download as attached. For your information, it consists of a summary of various activities of ISGAN, including Annexes and the results of 2018 Award of excellence competition.

The event was organized by the International Smart Grid Action Network (ISGAN), in collaboration with the CEM-initiative 21st Century Power Partnership and Mission Innovation; Smart Grids Innovation Challenge. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), energy storage is a key clean energy technology, which will play a critical role in the transition to a climate neutral energy system.

The event gathered international experts for a knowledge exchange dialogue to inform a coming Case Book on Energy Storage Systems to be published by ISGAN later this year.

Examples highlighted at the event covered chemical storage (batteries) for power systems frequency response, the use of thermal inertia in buildings and chemical storage for seasonal balancing of power systems (ammonia and hydrogen).

From the discussions it was noted that future, rather than present, needs should be in focus in the coming Case Book. It was also suggested that examples based on regulatory experiments should be given priority, as these are of key importance to create an enabling environment for energy storage technologies.

The meeting was moderated by Ms Helen Clarkson, CEO The Climate Group and keynote speaker was Dr Lawrence Jones from Edison Electric Institute. The full program is attached.

How should energy markets be designed to allow for energy system integration and a greater variety of stakeholders and roles? And what are the key elements in market design that we must focus on to accelerate deployment of smart grid technologies and solutions? These are key questions that will be discussed during a highly interactive international dialogue.

The outcome of the dialogue will provide input to a high-level panel discussion in Copenhagen the next day – in connection to CEM – focusing on concrete policy recommendations pushing the market design agenda forward.

Event type
Workshop

Location
Malmö Live, Dag Hammarskjölds Torg 4, 211 18 Malmö

Organizer
Smart Grid Action Network (ISGAN) and Swedish Smartgrid

Contact information
albin.carlen@swedishsmartgrid.se

Event website
http://swedishsmartgrid.se/intelligentmarketdesign

13 Jun 2018 @ 14:00 CEST

The webinar is part of the GreeningTheGrid.org technical platform, which provides information and technical assistance to address the challenges related to grid modernization and the integration of variable renewable energy to the power system.

Affordable energy storage is sometimes referred to as the “holy grail” in the context of achieving high penetrations of solar and wind energy in the power system. With the costs of solar, wind and battery-based energy storage technologies declining dramatically in recent years, power sector stakeholders around the world are faced with policy and investment decisions related to the role of energy storage in a high-variable renewable energy system. Yet, the interactions between high variable renewable energy penetration and energy storage are power system-specific and in many cases are not well understood.

The webinar will provide a state-of-the-industry overview of the considerations related to cost-effective deployment of energy storage in power systems pursuing high penetrations of variable renewable energy. The webinar will explore common questions, such as:

• Under what conditions is storage an attractive option relative to other sources of power system flexibility?
• What services do storage offer a power system with high variable renewable energy penetrations, and how might the value of these services change in different power system contexts (e.g., moderate versus high variable renewable energy penetrations, large versus small power systems, market and non-market systems)?
• What tools are available to help decision makers understand which type, what size, and where storage could be beneficial to their power systems?
• How might the downward trend in battery storage costs change how storage is considered as an integration solution?
• What lessons can other countries and power markets take away from the U.S. experience with energy storage?

The webinar will be presented and moderated by Paul Denholm and Jaquelin Cochran from NREL.

Paul Denholm, Ph.D., is a member of the Grid Systems Analysis Group in the Strategic Energy Analysis Center at NREL. Dr. Denholm is a leading researcher in grid applications for energy storage and solar energy. He pioneered a variety of research methods for understanding the technical, economic and environmental benefits and impacts of the large-scale deployment of renewable electricity generation. He has delivered over 100 invited presentations to agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the World Bank, and the International Energy Agency. He has co-authored over 100 articles related to renewable energy integration.

Jaquelin Cochran, Ph.D., is the group manager for the Market & Policy Analysis Group in the Strategic Energy Analysis Center at NREL. Dr. Cochran analyzes policies and market designs that create an enabling framework for emerging energy technologies (e.g., renewable energy, demand response, and distributed generation), with a focus on best practices for grid integration of renewable electricity. She recently co-led a renewable energy grid integration study of India. Before joining NREL, Dr. Cochran was an Assistant Professor of Natural Resource Management with KIMEP University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer for two years with the Polish Foundation for Energy Efficiency (FEWE) in Krakow. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from the Energy & Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley.

The presentations will be followed by an interactive question and answer session with the audience.

16 May 2018
10:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time | 4:00 p.m. Central European Time

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Mr. A. K. Mishra is General Manager and Director National Smart Grid Mission Project Management unit, responsible for operationalizing National Effort in preparing the utility and industry, under National Smart Grid Mission, for the transformation towards Smart Grid. He is working in close coordination with National Mission Innovation Team for project selection and utility perspective integration into research.

Mr. A. K. Mishra was previously involved as deputy and Addional General Manager, ICT sectoral lead and team leads for engineering for POWERGRID Corporation of India Limited. He had responsibilities for initiating national efforts on smart grid and transmission sector utility preparation for renewable integration.

ISGAN Presidium

At the ISGAN ExCo 15, Newcastle, Australia 2018

The public workshop started with an overview what Mission Innovation (MI) is, how it developed and what the six mayor R&D topics they work on are.

Mission Innovation (MI) is a global initiative of 22 countries and the European Union to dramatically accelerate global clean energy innovation. As part of the initiative, participating countries have committed to seek to double their governments’ clean energy research and development (R&D) investments over five years, while encouraging greater levels of private sector investment in transformative clean energy technologies. These additional resources will dramatically accelerate the availability of the advanced technologies that will define a future global energy mix that is clean, affordable, and reliable. MI developed seven challenges and the topic MI IC#1 is Smart Grids

MI IC#1 was founded in autumn 2016. It is is co-led by Italy (Luciano Martini), India (Sanjay Bajpai) and China (Yibo Wang).

Brief history of energy in Newcastle

Where we came from Smart City; concept of the Living Lab introduced by the City Council representatives. In the past Newcastlewas reknowned for its steel-making and the largest coal exporting port in the world.

In 1997 steel production was closing. Pathways to sustainability conference laid the future vision of Newcastle, under which the city aims to establishe itself as a world leader of in the area of Sustainable Energy Industry. Another positive development involved the CISRO chosing Newcastle as its main location. Australia’s 1st Green Power Scheme was elaborated shortly after that. In 2000 the first energy meeting took place with the contribution and from 900 community members.

Currently a 5MW Solar park is realized on a closed land fill with the plan to use the concept of virtual net metering for the council’s electricity demand.

Idea Bombing

Ideas around a living energy lab for Newcastle’s sportsground number 2 have been discussed.

Themes included:

• How people move
• How goods move
• Open or real time data
• Energy near futures – what is coming on the horizon?

Monday Workshops

• SIRFN
• ISGAN Strategic Communication
• Mission Innovation Challenge 1

Technical Site Visit

The ISGAN community visited Summerhill Waste Management Facility.

The head of the facility presented it capabilities in terms of waste collection and treatment in the local context. He raised the crucial importance of education in waste management and recycling and the measures currently undertaken in Newcastle.

The two main initiatives currently considered include waste to energy, WTE, and processed engineered fuel, PEF. PEF refers to the processing of waste to produce feedstock for WTE and involves sorting, screening and shredding of waste. The process ensures that the feedstock is suitable for the WTE facility, maximizes its efficiency, reduces waste from the WTE facility and, finally help to transport fuel more efficiently.

Giving an overview of the issues in the industry is facing right now, the head of the facility mentioned fast changing regulation and the attitudes and awareness of the overall population. He pointed out the 70% recycling target established by the authorities, which is, however, currently difficult to achieve and the average recycling rate does not go beyond 45%. By way of an example, in big cities the population is not directly engaged with their environment, thus recycling activities are much more difficult to conduct compared to small communites. This creates an oportunity for a regulatory change from recycling to diversion and recovery (waste to energy).

Reception at Newcastle’s City Mayor

Newcastle welcomed ISGAN Experts at the City Hall

In the afternoon CSIRO and Newcastle City Council organized Workshops and Idea Bombing on Smart City Newcastle.

ExCo Meeting

From Wednesday to Friday the Executive Committee meet to discuss adminstrative issues and pogress as well as work programs within their Annexes. A new Vice Chair was elected to support ISGAN presidium: Mr. A. K. Mishra from India

Proposed Agenda

The webinar deals with distribution planning in the era of smart grids. It is based on the CIGRE WG C6.19 activity. The main topics of the webinar are:

• Role and objectives of distribution planning
• Shortcomings of traditional planning in the current context
• Distribution planning in the era of Smart Grids
  • Load and generation representation, flexibility
  • Probabilistic models for distribution planning
  • Multi objective optimization
  • Smart Grid in distribution planning
• Multi-energy systems
• Cyber-physical simulation
• Example of application and case studies

Watch the webinar or find out more at Leonardo Energy.

2018 Buildings Co-ordination Group Meeting in Vienna

With participation of several TCPs, IEA secretariat (John Dulac), IEA EUWP Vice Chair for Buildings (Sabine Mitter) and IEA EUWP chair (Gudrun Maass) discussed building related priority research topics.

Photo: Hannes Warmuth, Sabine Mitter, Teun Boekhoven, Gudrun Maass, Adriana Diaz, Monixa Axcell, Even Bjornstad, Robin Wiltshire, Matthias Stifter, Ralf-Roman Schmidt, Ricardo Enriquez, Takao Sawachi (from left to right) (photo: Sabine Mitter)

The following TCPs have been represented:

• Demand Side Management (DSM)
• Heat Pumping Technologies (HPT)
• Energy Efficient End Use Equipment (4E)
• Energy Conservation through Energy Storage (ECES)
• District Heating and Cooling (DHC)
• Energy in Buildings and Communities (EBC)
• Solar Heating and Cooling (SHC)
• International Smart Grid Action Network (ISGAN)

ISGF is a public private partnership initiative of Govt. of India with the mandate of accelerating smart grid deployments across the country. With 180+ members comprising of ministries, utilities, technology providers, academia and research, ISGF has evolved as a Think-Tank of global repute on Smart Energy and Smart Cities.

ISGW 2018 will bring together India’s leading Electricity, Gas and Water Utilities, Policy Makers, Regulators, Investors and world’s top-notch Smart Energy Experts and Researchers to discuss trends, share best practices and showcase next generation technologies and products in smart energy and smart cities domains. ISGW 2018 will include plenaries, interactive workshops, panels, keynotes, and technical sessions.