In recent years the global shift to a more sustainable energy system is becoming a reality. Nevertheless, now more than ever it is necessary to make our best efforts in making this transition as fast as possible, because otherwise the consequences could be dreadful for our climate conditions. This change necessarily comes through a full transformation of the energy sector, which must consider the energy in all its shapes. Specifically, it is required the electric sector to be adapted to the foreseen penetration of renewable power generation by means of increasing the grid flexibility, guaranteeing its stability and supply security and making the energy affordable for all citizens. This transformation passes through taking advantage of the local renewable resources and turn the current power generation model into a more decentralized new one. To meet this purpose, the integration of electric storage batteries along the different stage of the power supply chain is crucial. This element plays a key role when it comes to adjust the variability of the generation coming from renewable sources such as wind and solar energy and the end-users demand, which sometimes responds to some given needs and cannot be shifted along the day, and sometimes it can be adapted to the generation profile. In this context, besides the integration of the proper technology into the grids, it is utterly necessary its correct management and thus, the development of suitable tools to balance the different elements integrated in the grid. TALENT aims a wide and cost-effective integration of batteries in the grid that will lead to an increase of the flexibility in the energy system and will be based on new technological developments in: i) scalable and modular power electronics topologies, ii) power electronics devices, iii) high-voltage batteries and iv) interoperable software as a service for energy resources management.

Four European TSOs of Central-Eastern Europe (Austria, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia), associated with power system experts, electricity retailers, IT providers and renewable electricity providers, propose to design a unique regional cooperation scheme: it aims at opening Balancing and Redispatching markets to new sources of flexibility and supporting such sources to act on such markets competitively. Thanks to a prototype aggregation solution and renewable generation forecasting techniques, flexibility providers – distributed generators (DG) and Commercial and Industrial (C&I) consumers providing demand response (DR) – are enabled, through retailers acting as flexibility aggregators, to provide competitive offers for Frequency Restoration Reserve (including secondary control activated with a response time between 30 seconds and 15 minutes). A comprehensive techno-economic model for the cross-border integration of such services involves a common activation function (CAF) tailored to congested borders and optimized to overcome critical intra-regional barriers. The resulting CAF is implemented into a prototype Regional Balancing and Redispatching Platform, securely integrated within the four TSOs’ IT systems: this makes research activities about cross-border integration flexible while linking with the aggregation solution. Use cases of growing complexity are pilot tested, going from the involvement of DR and DG into national balancing markets to cross-border competition between flexibility aggregators. Based on past experience with tertiary reserve, participating C&I consumers and DG are expected to provide close to 40MW of secondary reserve. Impact analyses of the pilot tests together with dissemination activities towards all the stakeholders of the electricity value chain will recommend business models and deployment roadmaps for the most promising use cases, which, in turn, contribute to the practical implementation of the European Balancing Target Model by 2020.

Storage is becoming one of the most critical assets for modern energy systems. At the same time storage is a very diverse universe of solutions and technologies with very different characteristics. InterSTORE plans to address this complexity by developing an innovative middleware that, while virtualising the storage technology, will simplify its use from the point of view of integration platform thanks to a technology agnostic approach.The middleware will facilitate the integration of storage creating an independence from hardware solutions which are critical from customer perspectives to avoid vendor lock-in solutions. It will also facilitate its use from a monetisation perspective making sure that more investments in storage are enabled. InterSTORE middleware will be released as a full open-source product integrating a set of already available standards and protocols in a coherent and advanced architecture.The new InterSTORE solution will be tested and validated in a laboratory environment with the goal to develop testing software to be adopted in the future for interoperability certification. The middleware solution will also be integrated both in open source and commercial platforms that will be integrated in 4 real life demos to enhance the flexibility platforms and analyze the user acceptance and economic value of the new solution. Moreover, new and legacy systems will be taken into account. InterSTORE also has a strong focus towards impact. The solution will become part of existing commercial platforms ensuring that a real adoption will be deployed beyond the end of the project. The consortium will ensure that software maintenance will continue beyond the end of the project with the support of Linux Foundation Energy and that the work done will be considered by on-going standardization activities. SSH experts will perform an impact analysis to maximize the economic impact adopting innovative approaches to data monetization in the context of data spaces.

In the framework of the achievement of the EU Climate and Energy packages for the decarbonisation of the energy sectors, the integration of variable renewable energy sources will put at stake the stability and provision security of the electricity system: there is a growing need for flexibility provision to ensure a reliable and stable electric system. MAGNITUDE addresses the challenge to rise flexibility in electricity systems, by increasing the synergies between electricity, heating/cooling and gas networks and associated systems. MAGNITUDE will bring technical solutions, market design and business models, to be integrated on ongoing policy discussions. MAGNITUDE will define technological and operational means for maximising flexibility provision to the electricity network. It will identify the regulatory framework to bring such flexibility service to the energy markets and will provide enhanced market designs and related business mechanisms. MAGNITUDE is built upon 7 real life case studies of multi energy systems, located in different European countries, under different regulatory and geopolitical environments and with different technological development levels. It will: 1. Simulate the multi energy systems in the case studies and optimise their operation strategies maximising the provision of specific flexibility services 2. From existing regulations, propose improved market designs, and integrate them in a market simulation platform for evaluating its performance among the case study countries 3. Quantify the benefit of pooling flexibilities from decentralized multi energy systems for energy markets through an aggregation platform. MAGNITUDE results will define policy strategies and recommendations in a pan-European perspective. Achievements will be spread among stakeholders to raise awareness and foster higher collaboration among the electricity, heating and gas sectors to achieve the common goal of a less carbon intensive, yet reliable energy system.

InteGrid’s vision is to bridge the gap between citizens, technology and the other players of the energy system. The project will demonstrate how DSOs may enable all stakeholders to actively participate in the energy market and distribution grid management and develop and implement new business models, making use of new data management and consumer involvement approaches. Moreover, the consortium will demonstrate scalable and replicable solutions in an integrated environment that enables DSOs to plan and operate the network with a high share of DRES in a stable, secure and economic way, using flexibility inherently offered by specific technologies and by interaction with different stakeholders. To achieve these objectives, a complementary partnership covering the distribution system value chain has been established. The consortium includes three DSOs from different countries and their retailers, innovative ICT companies and equipment manufacturers as well as customers, a start-up in the area of community engagement and excellent R&D institutions. InteGrid’s concepts and approaches are based on the these two elements: 1. the role of the DSO as system optimiser and as market facilitator and 2. the integration of existing demonstration activities in three different regions allowing to move from single solutions to an integrated management at a higher scale while focusing on the scalability and replicability considering current and evolving market (and regulatory) conditions. The three conceptual pillars – proactive operational planning with DER, business models for flexible DER, information exchange between different power system actors – offer an opportunity to maximize the economic, societal and environmental gains from the combined integration of DRES and flexible DER. A market hub platform coupled with smart grid functions and innovative business models will open opportunities for new services and an effective roll-out of emerging technologies in the short-term.