The introduction of the electricity market, the widespread diffusion of distributed generation from renewable and non-programmable energy sources and the need for storage are quickly changing the problems that Transmission and Distribution system operators have to face in their activity and are requiring a “smarter” grid. A first step in this direction is the development and installation of a flexible smart metering architecture for multiple energy vectors. Up to now the smart meters that in some countries are being installed at the users are nearly only devoted to billing improvements. The new metering systems must go much further to provide their contribution to various objectives such as end-user affordability of electricity, energy and market efficiency improvement, CO2 emissions and pollutants reduction. In the FLEXMETER project a flexible, multi-utility, multi-service metering architecture will be designed and deployed in two demonstrators. Simple off-the-shelf meters will be placed at the users for electric, thermal and gas metering; they will communicate with a building concentrator, where the “smartness” of the metering system will reside. A central cloud system will collect data from the building concentrators and from MV/LV substation meters. Data collection, fusion and mining algorithms will be adopted. The proposed architecture will allow for innovative services for the prosumers (e.g. analysis of the energy consumption), for the Distribution System Operators (DSOs) (e.g. fault detection, network balancing and storage integration) and for the retail market. Also demand side management devices could be plugged into the system. In the FLEXMETER project two pilot applications in two different countries (Italy and Sweden), on real systems, with the involvement of the local DSOs and volunteer prosumers will be demonstrated. The results on the demonstrators will then be scaled up to the size of the cities in order to evaluate the advantages on a real scale.

Five DSOs (CEZ distribuce, ERDF, EON, Enexis, Avacon) associated with power system manufacturers, electricity retailers and power system experts, propose a set of six demonstrations for 12 to 24 months. Within three years, they aim at validating the enabling role of DSOs in calling for flexibility sources according to local, time-varying merit orders. Demonstrations are designed to run 18 separate use cases involving one or several of the levers increasing the local energy system flexibility: energy storage technologies (electricity, heat, cold), demand response schemes with two coupling of networks (electricity and gas, electricity and heat/cold), the integration of grid users owning electric vehicles, and the further automation of grid operations including contributions of micro-grids. The use cases are clustered into three groups. Three use cases in Sweden and the Czech Republic address the enhancement of the distribution network flexibility itself. Five use cases in France, Germany and Sweden demonstrate the role of IT solutions to increase drastically the speed of automation of the distribution networks, which can then make the best use of either local single or aggregated flexibilities. Ten use cases in Czech Republic, France, The Netherlands and Sweden combine an increased network automation and an increased level of aggregation to validate the plausibility of local flexibility markets where both distributed generation and controllable loads can be valued. Replicability of the results is studied by the DSOs and industry with an in-depth analysis of the interchangeability and interoperability of the tested critical technology components. Dissemination targeting the European DSOs and all the stakeholders of the electricity value chain will be addressed by deployment roadmaps for the most promising use cases, thus nourishing the preparation of the practical implementation of the future electricity market design, the draft of which is expected by end of 2016.