System Operation and Security Assessment
The commitment to meet the energy needs of the society in a carbon-free, environmentally-friendly manner is driving two trends:
- increasing proliferation of renewable energy sources (RES), most notably wind and solar, connected at all grid levels (HV, MV & LV) and
- increasing electrification of energy demand, i.e. heating and transportation, including all electric vehicles (EVs) such as personal and electric bus fleets, mostly connected at MV and LV levels
These trends progressively lead to distribution (MV/LV) grids with (i) high non-dispatchable local power production and (ii) larger electricity demand, resulting in an increased need by the DSOs (distribution system operators) for control solutions for thermal congestion management and voltage regulation due to higher, bi-directional, and more variable, peak power flows, so that investments on grid reinforcement are deferred.
Furthermore, as intermittent and converter-interfaced RES increasingly penetrate the generation mix, TSOs (transmission system operators) need flexible services for frequency control, energy balancing, and voltage support. New schemes to accurately represent the response of the grid to disturbances have to be adopted to ensure that the grid is stable, supplying electric energy in a secure and reliable manner. Such schemes will rely on frameworks which will benefit from (i) the new data thanks to increasing digitalization (e.g., measurements from DER, smart meters, PMUs, micro PMUs, grid-edge sensors etc.), (ii) closer interaction of TSOs and DSOs, (iii) new models of converter-interfaced resources in RMS and EMT modeling, and (iv) new operational techniques ensuring that the existing infrastructure is techno-economically utilized.
Please visit the dedicated page of each project on the relevant topics above.