The new integration capacity, combined with aggregate flexibility potential, will give consumers the opportunity to actively support a grid operators' congestion management and thus contribute to the energy transition. Flexible systems include heat pumps, battery storage, electric vehicles and micro-CHP installations.
One approach to be tested in the project concerns the use of the Crowd Balancing Platform developed by Equigy. This Blockchain-based platform enables private households and owners of electric vehicles to offer the flexible capacity of their systems, via their electricity suppliers and aggregators, on the system service markets for the stabilisation the electricity grid.
Dr. Dirk Biermann, Managing Director of Markets and System Operation at 50Hertz, explains: "With the progressive digitalisation of the energy transition, the roll-out of intelligent metering systems and the development of new communication standards and interfaces there will be greater opportunities in the next 10 years to incorporate even the smallest of flexibilities into our processes. In order to be able to serve the energy industry processes and market participants, on the one hand we need scalable and efficient platforms that aggregate hundreds of thousands of units and at the same time can process large data flows. On the other hand, it is important to further develop coordinated data exchange and retrieval processes between all system operators. Both topics should be worked on in the project with the involvement of other partners. "
Tim Meyerjürgens, COO of TenneT, explained: "In a sustainable energy future, we also need private households to maintain security of supply. The Equigy Blockchain Platform, together with the co-operation of European TSOs, will pave the way for utilisation of small decentralised flexibilities in Europe. The endeavour constitutes an important contribution to sector coupling and helps to secure the transformation of the energy supply system."
Underlying the activities of German and European TSO' s is the awareness that, in the future, there will be increasingly less conventional fossil-fuel power plant capacity available to balance the fluctuations in electricity generation and consumption, and to offset grid congestion. The flexibility potential provided by millions of decentralised micro-systems can therefore make an important contribution to system stability.
The Equigy Platform, a consortium of European TSO's, offers flexibility providers a non-discriminatory accessible IT infrastructure to efficiently design the data and information flows necessary to provide system services based on small-scale flexibilities. The cooperation between the two transmission system operators 50Hertz and TenneT will focus on integrating micro-systems with an output of less than 100 kW into congestion management, i.e. systems that are not currently subject to legally binding participation in Redispatch 2.0. In addition to the actual implementation of a pilot environment, the cooperation will therefore also address regulatory issues in order to create the necessary incentives for micro-systems to participate in congestion management.
