Smart-grid optimisation using rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) to rapidly balance power grid network frequency - enabling more widespread use of unpredictable renewables and minimising blackouts

Project Information

OptiGRID

Grant agreement ID: 719137

DOI 10.3030/719137

Project closed

EC signature date 27 February 2016

Start date 1 March 2016

End date 31 May 2016

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost € 71 429,00

EU contribution € 50 000,00

Coordinated by

ENDECO TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED
Ireland

Objective

Endeco Technologies Ltd is a pioneering, award winning company recognised as the technology leader in smart grid energy aggregation. Our vision is to become the world’s largest fast acting electricity load aggregator, controlling over 350 MW of load and creating Europe’s largest ‘virtual power plant’. This will allow us to grow our company from our current aggregated load of 50 MW, and our turnover of €4.5 million to €43 million per year by 2022.

Electricity systems in EU countries are facing significant challenges as penetration of renewable energy (in particular wind) continues to increase to meet ambitious carbon reduction targets. Due to the intermittent and inflexible nature of renewable energy sources, efficient real-time frequency balancing of grids will become a major challenge for grid operators. A deviation of only 1 Hz from the standard grid frequency (50 Hz) can cause blackouts and power outages as the grid loses inertia, requiring grid operators to quickly add/remove load from the grid to restore balance.

Following our success with our current smart grid optimisation system we have seen an opportunity to introduce a disruptive new system, OptiGrid, which will use Rate of Change of Frequency (RoCoF) to allow potentially problematic changes in grid frequency to be detected and acted upon within 0.4 seconds, rather than the 10-second state of the art. As well as providing grid security, this will also allow a greater quantity of renewable energy sources to be integrated into the grid as we will be able to effectively and rapidly deliver the required frequency response performance to grid operators.

With the frequency response market expected to see imminent high growth, our technology is well placed to take a significant proportion of this target sector. In the five years following commercialisation, we forecast sales of OptiGrid to total €124.8 million and produce a profit of €28.8 million and an ROI of 1:17.5 over 5 years for Endeco Technologies.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• engineering and technology › electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering › electrical engineering › power engineering › electric power transmission

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Programme(s)

• H2020-EU.3.3. - SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy Main Programme
• H2020-EU.2.3.1. - Mainstreaming SME support, especially through a dedicated instrument

Topic(s)

• SIE-01-2015-1 - Stimulating the innovation potential of SMEs for a low carbon energy system

Call for proposal

H2020-SMEInst-2014-2015

See other projects for this call

Sub call

H2020-SMEINST-1-2015

Funding Scheme

SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1

Coordinator

ENDECO TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED

• Net EU contribution: € 50 000,00
• Address: SYNERGY CENTRE AT IT TALLAGHT TALLAGHT ; 24 DUBLIN ; Ireland
• SME The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed. Yes:
  Region
  Ireland › Eastern and Midland › Dublin
• Region: Ireland › Eastern and Midland › Dublin
• Activity type: Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
• Total cost: € 71 429,00