Final Report Summary - GRID+ (Supporting the Development of the European Electricity Grids Initiative (EEGI))
Executive Summary:
The European Electricity Grid Initiative (EEGI) was implemented to accelerate innovation in the European electricity networks. The EEGI programme focuses on system innovation rather than on technology innovation, in view of integrating and validating new technologies and management processes under real life working conditions. The GRID+ project has been set up to act as a support team to the EEGI (the partners are research centres, consulting bodies, universities in close coordination with ENTSO-E and EDSO4SG) to assist the Implementation Plan over 2012-2014 with the following tasks:
• Encouraging and assisting cooperation between Member States in view of clustering national demonstration projects, mapping them to the implementation plan of the Initiative, thus leveraging on potential complementarities and fostering the extraction of the maximum European added value, thus ensuring an optimal use of resources;
• Fostering cooperation among projects, sharing knowledge for deployment, based on reliable scaling-up and replication rules;
• Further developing and upgrading the Implementation Plan by mapping projects supported at Members States and EU level together with their investment needs, while monitoring cost and benefits using appropriate KPIs;
• Monitoring the technological progress of the EEGI Implementation Plan;
• Addressing cross-cutting issues at SET-Plan level in close coordination and cooperation with other EII teams and initiatives (e.g. Wind, Solar, Electric Cars, Smart Cities etc.);
• Ensuring the continuous link between the EEGI and other smart grid initiatives, within the SET-Plan perimeter (e.g. EERA JP on Smart Grids, KIC Inno-energy, ERA-NET Smart Grids etc.) and other continental (US, Asia, Australia) or international (IEA, G8-G20, CEM, ISGAN) contexts, to facilitate the dialogue, cooperation and experience sharing, validating the results obtained within the EEGI through peer-comparison, and assessing the initiative’s choices through international confrontation.
The EEGI initially set up a roadmap and an implementation plan (2010); in addition, the EU-JRC started a survey of on-going smart grids projects across Europe. In order to optimize the development of the EEGI instruments, a strong interaction was established by GRID+ with the EU-RC to mutually contribute to one another’s work and optimize respective tools. Based on the strong relationships of GRID+ partners at international level (e.g. with ISGAN, GSGF, IEA, DoE, ECLAC, national smart grids initiatives and associations, etc.) a survey was carried out about major smart grids initiatives and projects around the world. To better understand the mutual role of the different SET Plan initiatives dealing with electricity networks, a comparison was made between the priorities of the EEGI Roadmap and that of several other European initiatives, with special reference to ETP, EERA JP smart grids, EERA/EASE on storage, REALISEGRID and IRENA40 on transmission. In order to allow the setting of priorities in the EEGI roadmap and Implementation plan at the light of the present and past achievements of the smart grids applied research and demonstration, an extended gap analysis was carried out, involving a very large number of stakeholders. Incidentally, the Commission asked the GRID+ consortium to carry out a European survey of on-going projects dedicated to energy storage solutions and this was included in the GRID+ workplan.
Taking into consideration the rapidly evolving environment in the European energy sector, strong attention was given to the perspectives of the electricity networks as part of a global energy system, with special reference to its integration with other energy networks (e.g. gas, hydrogen, cooling and heating, etc.), contributing to the solution of global European energy challenges as expressed in the Set Plan Integrated roadmap:
• Active consumer at the centre of the energy system
• Demand focus: increasing energy efficiency across the energy system
• System optimisation
• Secure, cost-effective, clean and competitive supply
• Cross-cutting social, environmental and economic aspects and international cooperation
The key to success of the EEGI is its impact on projects to coordinate efforts in view of their more rational contribution to the achievements of the results delineated in the EEGI roadmap. To reach this goal, GRID+ has set up and applied a method to assess the potential contribution of projects in the achievements of the final EEGI goal, engaging projects to join a sort of community (EEGI labelled projects) where interaction, information exchange, knowledge sharing, common approaches and dissemination activities would be motivated, accelerating the delivery of a higher European added value. The process of enquiry, application, selection, awarding and labelling was set up and successfully applied by GRID+. Collaboration between projects (and especially EEGI-labelled projects) was made real by means of a program of interaction initiatives, where project managers could effectively exchange experiences and lessons learned on subjects of common interest. With the aim of rationalizing and stabilizing the knowledge produced by projects avoiding the loss of experience which often takes place at the end of a project, GRID+ developed, tested and launched a web-based knowledge sharing platform called GridInnovationOnline: this platform has been populated with the results from several European and national projects and represents an effective asset to leverage for the future. Additional tools were developed for projects in view of their optimized deliveries: a set of metrics for the evaluation of the extent and effectiveness of the project contribution to the achievement of the goals of the EEGI roadmap was set up and delivered, in the form of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and their quantification; being the EEGI community focused on TRL 5-7 (demonstration levels) it was deemed important to evaluate the factors influencing the potential of a demonstration project to be scaled up in similar boundary conditions or to be replicated in different regions with different conditions and regulations: to this aim a method and a tool was developed and validated for a project self-evaluation of the scalability and replicability potential. Finally, with the aim of contributing to rationalize and stabilize the demonstration funding, an analysis was carried out of the funding mechanisms adopted in several European countries and abroad and a proposal of a specific funding route involving Member States, regulators and network operators was formulated.
Project Context and Objectives:
Energy technology is vital if Europe's objectives for 2020 and 2050 are to be achieved. Strong action is needed to reduce carbon emissions and limit climate change, and to ensure security of energy supply and competitiveness of European companies. However, certain constraints hamper the development and widespread application of energy technologies; a chronic underinvestment affected this sector since the late 1980s. The European Strategic Energy Technology plan (SET-Plan) aims to help achieve European objectives and face the challenges of this sector by increasing research, reducing costs and improving performance of existing technologies, encouraging their commercial implementation, and, in the longer term, supporting the deployment of a new generation of low carbon technologies. The SET-Plan has received a strong political support from the European Council and from the European Parliament, both underlining the need of an increased level of investment (both public and private), confirming the use of the present financial instruments to implement to SET-Plan (i.e: HORIZON 2020, the European Economic Recovery Plan, the NER300) and fostering the creation and operation of the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) and of the European Industrial Initiatives (EII). The EIIs gather outstanding energy stakeholders, under the lead of industrial players, to elaborate and implement plans to structure the European efforts towards the goals of the SET-Plan. EIIs have the aim to boost research, demonstration and innovation to accelerate the development and deployment of low carbon energy technologies, leveraging a strong public and private partnership. The European Electricity Grid Initiative (EEGI) was implemented to accelerate innovation in the European electricity networks. The EEGI programme focuses on system innovation rather than on technology innovation, in view of integrating and validating new technologies and management processes under real life working conditions. The GRID+ project has been set up to act as a support team to the EEGI (the partners are research centres, consulting bodies, universities in close coordination with ENTSO-E and EDSO4SG) to assist the Implementation Plan over 2012-2014 with the following tasks:
• Encouraging and assisting cooperation between Member States in view of clustering national demonstration projects, mapping them to the implementation plan of the Initiative, thus leveraging on potential complementarities and fostering the extraction of the maximum European added value, thus ensuring an optimal use of resources;
• Fostering cooperation among projects, sharing knowledge for deployment, based on reliable scaling-up and replication rules;
• Further developing and upgrading the Implementation Plan by mapping projects supported at Members States and EU level together with their investment needs, while monitoring cost and benefits using appropriate KPIs;
• Monitoring the technological progress of the EEGI Implementation Plan;
• Addressing cross-cutting issues at SET-Plan level in close coordination and cooperation with other EII teams and initiatives (e.g. Wind, Solar, Electric Cars, Smart Cities etc.);
• Ensuring the continuous link between the EEGI and other smart grid initiatives, within the SET-Plan perimeter (e.g. EERA JP on Smart Grids, KIC Inno-energy, ERA-NET Smart Grids etc.) and other continental (US, Asia, Australia) or international (IEA, G8-G20, CEM, ISGAN) contexts, to facilitate the dialogue, cooperation and experience sharing, validating the results obtained within the EEGI through peer-comparison, and assessing the initiative’s choices through international confrontation.
Project Results:
The collective roadmap upgrading, launched in early 2012, has allowed transmission and distribution operators to shape up upgraded clusters (and their functional objectives) for their research and innovation activities according to similar value chains. The single overarching goal of the EEGI Research and Innovation (R&I) Roadmap is: “to allow European electricity networks continuously deliver an effective flexible capacity to integrate actions of grid users at affordable costs”.
The EEGI roadmap 2012-2014 aims at delivering a portfolio of innovative pathways for preparing European electricity networks to enable the ambitious 2050 agenda adopted by European Member States: a low carbon economy leaning on the three pillars of European energy policy, i.e. sustainability, energy market competitiveness, and security of supply. The enabling capability of electrical networks means their effective flexible capacity to connect renewable electricity generation (sustainability), serving customers according to affordable electricity pricing (market competitiveness), while keeping the system reliability at levels compatible with societal needs (security of supply). The electrical networks must be ready to provide connection solutions for all grid users going from existing and new generation (e.g. RES) to existing and new demands (e.g. electric vehicles), while combining with the other industrial initiatives to be in line with the SET Plan orientations. Overall, the EEGI R&I roadmap focuses on the enabling factors that network operators must put in place to face whatever energy scenarios occur between 2015 and 2050.
Five Research and Innovation clusters are outlined by transmission system operators, each composed of several Functional Objectives:
• C1 - Grid architectures:
o T1: Definition of scenarios for pan-European network scenarios
o T2: Planning methodology for the future pan-European transmission system
o T14: Towards increasing public acceptance of transmission infrastructures
• C2 - Power technologies:
o T3: Demonstration of power technologies to increase the network flexibility and operation means
o T4: Demonstration of novel network architectures
o T5: Interfaces for large-scale demonstration of renewables integration
• C3 - Network operation:
o T6: Innovative tools and methods to observe and control the pan-European networks
o T7: Innovative tools and methods for coordinated operation with stability margin evaluation
o T8: Improved training tools and methods to ensure better coordination at the regional and pan-European levels
o T9: Innovative tools and approaches for pan-European network reliability assessment
• C4 - Market design:
o T10: Advanced pan-European market tools for ancillary services and balancing, including active demand management
o T11: Advanced tools for capacity allocation and congestion management
o T12: Tools and market mechanisms for ensuring system adequacy and efficiency in electric systems integrating very large amounts of RES generation
• C5 - Asset management:
o T15: Developing approaches to determine and maximize the lifetime of critical power components for existing and future networks
o T16: Development and validation of tools which optimize asset maintenance at the system level, based on quantitative cost-benefits analysis
o T17: Demonstration of new asset management approaches at EU level
Five Research and Innovation clusters are outlined by distribution system operators, each composed of several Functional Objectives:
• C1 – Integration of smart customers:
o D1: Active demand and increased flexibility
o D2: Energy efficiency from integration of smart homes
• C2 – Integration of DER and new uses:
o D3: DSO integration of small DER
o D4: System integration of medium DER
o D5: Integration of storage in network management
o D6: Infrastructures to host EV/PHEV
• C3 – Network operation:
o D7: Monitoring and control of LV networks
o D8: Automation and control of MV networks
o D9: Network management tools
o D10: Smart meters data processing
• C4 – Network planning and asset management:
o D11: New planning approaches for distribution networks
o D12: Asset management
• C5 – Market design:
o D13: Novel approaches for market design analysis
Five Functional objectives were evidenced at the interface between transmission and distribution, and more specifically:
• C1 – Joint TSO/DSO activities:
o TD1: Increased observability of the distribution system for transmission network management and control
o TD2: The integration of demand side management at DSO level into TSO operation
o TD3: Ancillary services provided through DSOs
o TD4: Improved defense and restoration plans
o TD5: Methodologies for scaling-up and replicating
The investment needed to achieve the goals of the roadmap is estimated in about 2.1 b€
In view of completing the overall picture of the on-going activities in the field of smart grids at global level, thus complementing the work in progress within the EC-JRC, a survey was carried out, based on public documents and leveraging the strong relationship with worldwide smart grids organisations. In particular, project being conducted in USA, Brazil, China, Corea and Australia were surveyed and analysed. The main conclusions of the survey can be summarized as follows:
• In each of the countries considered, the smart grid forms a vital part of government strategy to achieve the common goals of energy security and low carbon economic growth. Only the smart grid can integrate distributed renewable generation into the power system, which permits countries to support their energy independence while reducing their carbon footprint. The smart grid fosters innovation and economic growth fueled by skills development and higher employment levels. It presents unique economic opportunities for industry and individuals to profit by engaging in behaviors which help achieve important societal goals like energy security and decarbonization.
• The projects considered evidence the fact that smart grids do exist all around the world. It is apparent that in America there is a strong focus on peak load reduction technology and dynamic pricing tariff pilots (whereas in Europe more emphasis is placed on improving energy efficiency and reducing emissions through the use of more decentralized means of production). In the Asia-Pacific region drivers vary country to country – from modernizing and improving grid reliability in China, to techniques for load management in Australia.
• In the developed world (in the U.S for example) most electrical grids were built in the post-World War II period. In these countries, electricity demand is growing and load profiles are changing, putting strains on aging infrastructure. In the more recently developed countries this issue is less important, but on the other hand transmission grids usually need to be extended and interconnected.
• It is fundamental that governments put strong efforts and investments in the development of smart grid applications, and mainly in demonstration projects, and that the local authorities support the start of these initiatives. Actually this is the case for all the countries considered, and in particular: China: 100 b$, South Korea 34.5 b$, U.S. 3.4 b$ and Australia 100 m$.
• The most difficult challenge to a successful smart grid lies in winning consumer support. Without it, the smart grid cannot exist and it cannot deliver its promised benefits. Winning consumer support depends on a radical change in thinking by utilities about their customers and by consumers about electricity.
• Governments can be an effective mediator between the various stakeholders involved in smart grid deployment.
GRID+ has conducted, based on a specific request by the Commission, a survey of projects aimed at researching and/or demonstrating grid-connected storage technologies. The total number of projects mapped reaches 331, totaling 2,6 b€ in investment have been tracked. The following main findings can be drawn from the storage mapping exercise:
• Europe as a whole is betting heavily on batteries and is seriously investing in Power-to-gas and thermal storage. Most of these developments concern other than centralized storage.
• Most efforts on storage are research efforts.
• Although many more projects cover the distribution and the end-user level, large and concentrated investments can be seen in transmission and generation-based storage.
• For the years to come we may expect many demo and pilot projects on distributed/local electrochemical, chemical and thermal storage as the current generation of research matures.
• National governments are the main source of funding, although the EC's share is relatively high in comparison to general R&D spending in the EU.
With the aim of assessing the level of achievement of the goals of the EEGI roadmap, a gap analysis was conducted considering the different Clusters and Functional Objectives of the EEGI document. For each of the items, a thorough analysis was carried out considering the outstanding projects contributing to the knowledge of the reference subject. Each Functional Objective was analysed at the light of maturity categories (e.g. hardware, software, integration into the system, business model, regulatory framework, stakeholders involvement etc.), and assessed in terms of a maturity level to give indication about the level of advancement of the solutions considered (e.g. needing additional research, ready for deployment etc.). Tables and graphs were elaborated, as extensively explained in the related project deliverables. However, in very brief words, the big picture for transmission system R&I can be seen that in general, much work remains to be done in a close collaboration between network operators and technology providers: Power technologies (T3), renewables integration (T5) and planning tools (T2) are well advanced, while research work is urgent on public acceptance (T14), residual asset life evaluation (T15) and advanced pan-European market tools for ancillary services and balancing, including active demand management (T10). For the TSO-DSO interface, the analysis across all functional objectives, shows that the maturity categories needing more basic research appear to be those related to economic aspects (business models and cost-benefits analysis) and the regulatory aspects. Finally, the DSO cluster analysis showed that the FOs that require more efforts are D12 (Novel approaches to asset management), D5 (Integration of storage in network management), D6 (Integration of infrastructure to host Electrical Vehicles) and D3 (Integration of DER at LV level). In terms of maturity categories, attention shall be devoted to “regulatory framework”, “stakeholders involvement” and “business models”: in these categories fundamental research with the academia must be closely connected to the actual performances of the networks and pilot projects involving real networks and customers have to be realised in order to obtain realistic figures and measured performances.
1.4 Assessing performances and leveraging the projects that can offer an outstanding contribution to the EEGI goals
Given the vast amount of Smart Grid projects running in Europe, a mechanism to highlight those projects that are of central interest to the EEGI and with the spirit of its objectives has been set up within GRID+ and has been applied as “Labelling scheme”. The EEGI Label has the aim to highlight to the EEGI those projects of particular interest, providing a system for validating projects that fall into the scope of the EEGI programme. The labelling process was considered by the EEGI for a total of 37 projects, after the approval of the labelling scheme.
Research and innovation activities and projects are carried out to deliver new knowledge and solutions and to demonstrate the viability and performances of smart grids technologies as applied under the boundary conditions (structure, market, regulation, social etc.) of the EU28. As seen from the EEGI, projects can also be considered in terms of their potential contribution towards the achievement of the EEGI roadmap overarching goals. To this aim, GRID+ has set up a system of metrics, based on the concept of Key Performances Indicators KPIs) finalized at supporting the monitoring process of the R&I activities, thus effectively showing the progress of delivering the expected new knowledge and solutions needed to meet the EEGI roadmap overarching goals and at supporting the R&I management process which links the expected impacts of each R&I project (national and/or European) with the deployment conditions of the resulting most promising knowledge, provided that this knowledge has been shown to be scalable and replicable by network operators at affordable costs. The innovations that contribute to the EEGI Roadmap are supported by two kinds of KPIs, namely implementation effectiveness KPI (which measures the progress of research and innovation activities, as percentage of completion of a functional objective or a set of functional objectives within any of the clusters defined in the EEGI Roadmap) and expected impact KPIs (which estimate the contribution of the new R&I achievements gained within the EEGI Roadmap). Increasing network capacity and/or system flexibility can be monitored through seven specific KPIs (six KPIs that are common to TSOs and DSOs and one additional that is applicable to DSOs):
o B.1 Increased RES and DER hosting capacity.
o B.2 Reduced energy curtailment of RES and DER.
o B.3 Power quality and quality of supply.
o B.4 Extended asset life time.
o B.5 Increased flexibility from energy players.
o B.6 Improved competitiveness of the electricity market.
o B.7 Increased hosting capacity for electric vehicles (EVs) and other new loads.
The evaluation of KPIs has been trial tested on two major EEGI labelled projects (i.e. GRID4EU and TWENTIES), demonstrating their validity and the opportunities to extend this type of analysis to other projects, thus complementing the internal assessment of project performances.
1.5 Scaling up and replicating project results
Most smart grid projects are still in the R&I or the demonstration phases. The full roll-out of the tested solutions requires a suitable degree of scalability and replicability to avoid that demonstrators remain local experimental exercises.
• Scalability can be defined as the ability of a system to change its scale in order to meet growing volumes of demand, under similar boundary conditions.
• Replicability denotes the property of a system that allows it to be duplicated at another location or time.
The evaluation of the scalability and replicability potential of a project are the preliminary phase to ensure a successful scaling-up and replication successfully: in fact this assessment points out during the project development phase the potential barriers and difficulties that the project may encounter when the size of the project needs to be enlarged to a wider area or when the project results need to be replicated elsewhere. GRID+ has conducted a wide research to set up the factors influencing the scalability and replicability potential and has proposed a methodology to be adopted by project managers for a self-assessment of these important features. The method has also been implemented in an on-line software tool to increase the accessibility of the method. Influencing factors have been classified into three main categories, namely: technical, economical and regulatory. Projects are analysed at the light of several sub criteria for each factor, and in particular, for scalability:
• Technical factors:
o Modularity: engineering technique to build up a system by combining smaller subsystems;
o Technology Evolution: the technology obsolescence during the project development must be considered in systems characterised by a long service life;
o Interface Design: defines the interactions among components in the solution. Its importance is proportional to the number of interactions;
o Integration: the software tools designed for the solution need to be able to withstand the increased size when scaling up;
o Infrastructure Compatibility: to ensure that scaling-up will not encounter limits in size of infrastructure
• Economic factors:
o Economies of Scale: percentage increase in costs is lower than the percentage increase in project size.
o Profitability: The percentage increase in benefits is higher than the percentage increase in project size
• Regulatory factors:
o Regulatory Issues: Regulation should allow to scaling-up of the project up to the extent desired
o Acceptance: the assessment of stakeholders acceptance is necessary to guarantee the project success.
The application of the assessment methodology to a series of on-going major smart grids projects in Europe has revealed that barriers arising from technical factors can be most easily overcome by the projects; the influence on the lifting of barriers of economic and regulatory and stakeholder-related factors is limited and requires considerable effort. More in detail:
• Standardization requires an increased attention.
• Compatibility analysis (e.g. limits imposed by the infrastructure) should be taken into account.
• The attention on economic potential by carrying out cost-benefit analysis and by taking into account changing macro-economic environments should be increased.
• Stakeholder involvement (consent and acceptance) requires an increased attention (in both convincing stakeholders to participate and in establishing rules to involve and make participate stakeholders).
• The impact of the dependency on regulatory frameworks and the impact of market design require more attention. More uniformity in economic regulation (similar to the technical regulation) might be envisaged.
1.6 Sharing knowledge in the ERA community
The overarching goal of GRID+ is to increase the access to and the use of information and knowledge from public deliverables of R&I projects (mainly, but not restricted to, EU-funded projects). The scheme proposed in the project takes into account the need to report and share project outcomes while preserving legitimate intellectual property and respect existing regulated frameworks for dissemination and sharing of knowledge of public funded projects under FP7, H2020 or any other European or National funding programme. The scheme seeks to create a common framework for EEGI-relevant projects in the European Research Area (ERA), providing main principles and tools to sustain it and make it work efficiently. A Knowledge Sharing Platform (KSP) has been implemented and equipped with a search engine, to structure the new knowledge generated by R&I projects contributing to the EEGI roadmap.
The tool is available at the following url: http://www.gridinnovation-on-line.eu/
The knowledge sharing platform is made of a set of articles (namely state-of-the-art, project and knowledge articles), including a set of keywords associated to hyperlinks to allow visitors to navigate between articles within the platform. An interactive template dedicated to knowledge providers willing to input their results into the KSP displays the keywords required to support the description of the output. Two major categories are likely to interact within the KSP: knowledge providers (“contributors”) and knowledge seekers (“visitors”). The former are project partners and they produce and share the knowledge. The latter want to learn and benefit from the existing knowledge. The platform has been populated by a significant number of articles, provided by the different projects involved with the EEGI and some national projects.
1.7 Analysis of the electric networks R&I funding in Europe
Network R&I investments might be hampered by:
• a lack of internal funding capability to cover their own increasing personnel costs, even though some other players, who operate in the free market and are involved in the R&I collaborative activities, are ready to timely invest,
• a lack of regulatory support to charge these costs to the tariffs, even though the Third Energy Package encourages regulators to have these costs recognized in the tariff structure since the implementation of the 2009 IEM Directive,
• the intrinsic differences between transmission and distribution operators when it comes to financing Research and Innovation activities by the tariffs: Transmission Operators have a legal mandate at European level to plan and perform R&I activities of added value at national or European level. The number of separate TSOs organizations in Europe (41) makes the monitoring of costs and benefits of R&I activities much easier for National Regulatory Authorities than the ones of distribution operators (5000+ different organizations in Europe), which have no legal mandate to perform such R&I activities.
New adequate regulatory schemes for R&I funding are shown to be possible, thanks to the Third Energy Package and the attempts of several Member States: R&I investments, whether in line with the EEGI roadmap or dedicated to address national issues, can be charged by the network operators to the national tariffs. Yet, the EEGI network players have different business models and regulatory frameworks: thus funding approaches at European level linked to each national regulatory mechanism might lead to heterogeneous figures which, in turn, will impair timely R&I cooperation at EU level, following the agenda of the EEGI Roadmap. A simple solution to address this issue for Transmission System Operators is proposed. Indeed, R&I activities are part of the mandates assigned to the TSOs. CEER could delineate over three years (the duration of an implementation plan of the EEGI R&I Roadmap) the lump sum which TSOs contributing to the EEGI roadmap implementation have to forecast in their future R&I investments beyond what they foresee at national level : each NRA would then agree over three years about the right amount of tariff funding which would cover the contribution of its willing TSO to the R&I roadmap implementation. This “tariff-based funding” is earmarked for research and innovation activities only by each participating Member State. Each participating TSO is then capable of anticipating on staff needs and subcontracting resources to academia or any other research performer to cover the three-year joint R&I activities described in the implementation plan. As a counterpart, ENTSO-E would then be in charge of R&I coordination activities for TSOs. For Distribution Operators, the legal mandate for research and innovation does not exist. However, a process similar to the one suggested for TSOs could be looked upon via CEER for the benefits of DSOs willing to participate in R&I projects having European Added Value. This would complement at European level the existing national schemes which have been tested and are now used in several Member States, and described in the annexes. CEER could delineate a maximum lump sum of R&I investments to perform research and development activities jointly. This “tariff-based funding” is then earmarked for research and innovation activities only by the NRA of each participating Member State. Each participating DSO is then also capable of anticipating on staff needs and subcontracting resources to academia or any other research performer to cover the three-year joint R&I activities described in the EEGI implementation plan. Financing will lean on funding schemes in accordance with the innovation maturity. The high number of DSOs in Europe emphasizes the crucial needs of joint R&I work for replication studies accompanying demonstration projects and the implementation of knowledge sharing processes in order to maximize the probability of speedy deployment of innovative network solutions tested by only a few leading DSOs. As a counterpart, EDSO4SG would then be in charge of R&I coordination activities for DSOs. Overall, the close cooperation between network operators and regulators for innovation demonstrations, with a focus on scaling and replication studies of the tested solutions, will reinforce the accountability and transparency of the whole innovation process at EU level where network operators have indeed a major contribution.
Potential Impact:
Knowledge sharing already exists in Europe and international arena through different mechanisms and at different levels such as conferences, seminars, workshops, project public publications and events: many of these take place during the life of the project and are already included in their agendas. However there are still many opportunities and gaps to further enhance and boost the processes addressing some barriers that limit impact of business as usual activities.
The overarching goal of GRID+ is to increase the access to and the use of information and knowledge from public deliverables of R&I projects (mainly, but not restricted to, EU-funded projects). The scheme proposed in the project takes into account the need to report and share project outcomes while preserving legitimate intellectual property and respect existing regulated frameworks for dissemination and sharing of knowledge of public funded projects under FP7, H2020 or any other European or National funding programme. The scheme seeks to create a common framework for EEGI-relevant projects in the European Research Area (ERA), providing main principles and tools to sustain it and make it work efficiently. The involvement of projects, together with countries and regions and their public-funding programme owners and managers is therefore essential to achieve a more coordinated approach in Knowledge Sharing requirements and activities, while addressing all elements in the knowledge cycle. Additionally, the scheme aims at providing a clear framework enhancing current practices of knowledge sharing and dissemination by public funded projects, under the umbrella of EEGI and support from EEGI-Team as well as its linked support actions such as the GRID+ project. the main pillars of the knowledge sharing schemes are:
• Projects are the main seed and source of knowledge generation in this scheme, regardless of regional, national or European nature. The scheme will facilitate specific actions of projects using EEGI wide links to enhance impact trough active dissemination of project activities related to knowledge sharing. EEGI Monitoring activities will also be fed by projects, assessing progress and analysing gaps in the EEGI developments.
• Interactions take place in dedicated and planned workshops, webinars, thematic panel sessions, or any other form of bidirectional open exchange of information between projects or initiatives, arranged to address specific issues and gaps in the EEGI clusters after analysis and study of its progress by EEGI-Team and its support actions. Establishing active and organised dialogue between projects; facilitating and making bridges among projects with potential synergies are the main goals here. While the outcomes of interactions are useful for the whole community of stakeholders, they are also for the EEGI and its support actions.
The knowledge sharing scheme proposed in the frame of GRID+ tackles the matter in a more coordinated approach, with common principles, and allowing flexibility for bottom-up approaches as well. A way of fostering new ideas in the knowledge generation process is avoiding the isolation and fostering cooperation. Improving Knowledge Sharing offers different viewpoints and solutions to common problems.
Benefits to sharing knowledge include:
• Enhancement of effectiveness and efficiency by spreading good ideas and practices.
• Cost effectiveness – knowledge is developed and then re-used by other stakeholders.
• Time savings - Professionals learn from their mistakes and those of others (“lessons learnt”).
• More sophisticated ideas, insights and information sources are applied to problems resulting in better solutions.
• Respectful ways of using knowledge – with attribution and permission - benefit the one who generates the knowledge and the one who shares it.
The drivers and needs to foster and establish a knowledge sharing scheme are:
• Establish common framework and principles
• Structure new knowledge to be shared
• Ensure and facilitate access and availability of knowledge generated
• Foster interaction and mutual-learning among projects
• Increase awareness and understanding by wider public
• Knowledge sharing refers to the processes that go beyond mandatory dissemination of public information in projects, fostering interactions among public-funded projects and enhancing the awareness and access to project outcomes, best practices and experiences with the support of key stakeholders. Furthermore, it also aims at making information about foreground available and accessible and at providing a set of commonly recognized indicators to European grid operators through a knowledge platform.
• Interactions involve bringing together ongoing projects through active participation in seminars, workshops, forums of discussions or other events organized by or with cooperation of GRID+, and with the purpose of sharing information between ongoing projects regardless of their public source of financing. These can be done both in a coordinated top-down approach but also maximizing the impact of planned activities of projects.
• Project outputs and outcomes are described in public deliverables, publications, articles, reports, recommendations, best practices and lessons learned, description of functionalities and foreground obtained, indicators. EEGI-labelled projects commit to inform EEGI-Team about their progress and outputs, and input related knowledge in the Knowledge Sharing Platform implemented by GRID+.
• Added Value for projects: Projects with EEGI label shall naturally commit to this scheme either voluntarily or by contractual agreement with the funding organisation. However the scheme will not be limited to EEGI projects only. In return, participating projects will benefit from:
• Accelerated project progress by learning from others through ad-hoc interactions
• Support by the overarching network of stakeholders in the EEGI and GRID+
• Facilitated access to tools and products developed for projects
• Increased visibility and impact through active dissemination of Knowledge Sharing
Future projects implemented within the European Union and Associated States, regardless the source of public finance, shall foresee commitment, activities and cooperation within this scheme in order to ensure feasibility of their contribution to the EEGI through this scheme. This is already the case in latest FP7 projects, Horizon2020, and some National Projects. In addition to future EEGI projects on the pipe, on-going and past smart grids projects of relevant impact should be motivated to adhere and join this scheme. This could be proposed by project leaders, but also through indication of the EEGI-Team members adopting these on a case by case basis, ensuring the medium and long term access to their outcomes. Use of available existing project networks will also be fostered for this purpose.
A Knowledge Sharing Platform (KSP) has been implemented, equipped with a search engine, to structure the new knowledge generated by R&I projects contributing to the EEGI roadmap.
The tool is available at the following url: http://www.gridinnovation-on-line.eu/
The knowledge sharing platform is made of a set of articles, including a set of keywords associated to hyperlinks to allow visitors to navigate between articles within the platform. An interactive template dedicated to knowledge providers willing to input their results into the KSP displays the keywords required to support the description of the output.
Knowledge providers comprise EEGI project participants as well as public and private research organizations (e.g. technical centers) make up the body of knowledge providers (“contributors”). Knowledge providers are interested in valuing their knowledge or their know-how, looking for partners to develop non-mature technologies or solutions, or even looking for business opportunities for their research outputs. Knowledge providers need an accessible dissemination area, market opportunities, or technical support (different from their own expertise).
Two major categories are likely to interact within the KSP: knowledge providers (“contributors”) and knowledge seekers (“visitors”). The former are project partners and they produce and share the knowledge. The latter want to learn and benefit from the existing knowledge.
Knowledge seekers (“visitors”) are typically facing a knowledge gap and are eager to overcome this barrier. They are smart grid market players (grid operators, manufacturers, etc.) who are looking for a brand new solution (technology, methodology, product, etc.) or stakeholders who are interested in the contribution of an innovation towards the society or the impact regarding the environment (policy makers, the financial community, NGOs, press and media, etc.).
7.2.3 Articles
All articles are structured in the same way: the backbone of any article remains unchangeable and systematically contains a list of paramount information. Each article consists therefore of:
• Title stating in a short sentence (i.e. roughly ten words) the topic of the article;
• Abstract describing in approximately 50 words the context and outputs of the article;
• List of keywords (associated to tags, as displayed in the guided search tool);
• Detailed description made up of approximately 1000 words;
• Access to download related documents (e.g. deliverable reports).
State of the art article
The new knowledge is positioned within a state-of-the-art framework, in order to provide a comprehensive view of the projects and the new R&I outputs.
Project article
A project article is related to a specific project that addresses various challenges of a cluster. Its content provides the general description of the project and links to the related knowledge articles
A Knowledge article is devoted to one specific R&I result. Its content provides the general description of the research output (the new knowledge) and refers to a state-of-the art article. Each article is associated to a set of tags (hyperlinks) which allow implementing search functions and hyperlink navigation (for the knowledge seeker).
The Innovation library
The Innovation library is the heart of the portal. Its functions are the following:
• to provide a guided search tool;
• to allow the visitors to easily reach the information via tags; and
• to enable the contributors to input their R&I outputs (in the forms of articles) with a user-friendly template.
List of Websites:
www.gridplus.eu
contact details: michele.denigris@rse-web.it
The European Electricity Grid Initiative (EEGI) was implemented to accelerate innovation in the European electricity networks. The EEGI programme focuses on system innovation rather than on technology innovation, in view of integrating and validating new technologies and management processes under real life working conditions. The GRID+ project has been set up to act as a support team to the EEGI (the partners are research centres, consulting bodies, universities in close coordination with ENTSO-E and EDSO4SG) to assist the Implementation Plan over 2012-2014 with the following tasks:
• Encouraging and assisting cooperation between Member States in view of clustering national demonstration projects, mapping them to the implementation plan of the Initiative, thus leveraging on potential complementarities and fostering the extraction of the maximum European added value, thus ensuring an optimal use of resources;
• Fostering cooperation among projects, sharing knowledge for deployment, based on reliable scaling-up and replication rules;
• Further developing and upgrading the Implementation Plan by mapping projects supported at Members States and EU level together with their investment needs, while monitoring cost and benefits using appropriate KPIs;
• Monitoring the technological progress of the EEGI Implementation Plan;
• Addressing cross-cutting issues at SET-Plan level in close coordination and cooperation with other EII teams and initiatives (e.g. Wind, Solar, Electric Cars, Smart Cities etc.);
• Ensuring the continuous link between the EEGI and other smart grid initiatives, within the SET-Plan perimeter (e.g. EERA JP on Smart Grids, KIC Inno-energy, ERA-NET Smart Grids etc.) and other continental (US, Asia, Australia) or international (IEA, G8-G20, CEM, ISGAN) contexts, to facilitate the dialogue, cooperation and experience sharing, validating the results obtained within the EEGI through peer-comparison, and assessing the initiative’s choices through international confrontation.
The EEGI initially set up a roadmap and an implementation plan (2010); in addition, the EU-JRC started a survey of on-going smart grids projects across Europe. In order to optimize the development of the EEGI instruments, a strong interaction was established by GRID+ with the EU-RC to mutually contribute to one another’s work and optimize respective tools. Based on the strong relationships of GRID+ partners at international level (e.g. with ISGAN, GSGF, IEA, DoE, ECLAC, national smart grids initiatives and associations, etc.) a survey was carried out about major smart grids initiatives and projects around the world. To better understand the mutual role of the different SET Plan initiatives dealing with electricity networks, a comparison was made between the priorities of the EEGI Roadmap and that of several other European initiatives, with special reference to ETP, EERA JP smart grids, EERA/EASE on storage, REALISEGRID and IRENA40 on transmission. In order to allow the setting of priorities in the EEGI roadmap and Implementation plan at the light of the present and past achievements of the smart grids applied research and demonstration, an extended gap analysis was carried out, involving a very large number of stakeholders. Incidentally, the Commission asked the GRID+ consortium to carry out a European survey of on-going projects dedicated to energy storage solutions and this was included in the GRID+ workplan.
Taking into consideration the rapidly evolving environment in the European energy sector, strong attention was given to the perspectives of the electricity networks as part of a global energy system, with special reference to its integration with other energy networks (e.g. gas, hydrogen, cooling and heating, etc.), contributing to the solution of global European energy challenges as expressed in the Set Plan Integrated roadmap:
• Active consumer at the centre of the energy system
• Demand focus: increasing energy efficiency across the energy system
• System optimisation
• Secure, cost-effective, clean and competitive supply
• Cross-cutting social, environmental and economic aspects and international cooperation
The key to success of the EEGI is its impact on projects to coordinate efforts in view of their more rational contribution to the achievements of the results delineated in the EEGI roadmap. To reach this goal, GRID+ has set up and applied a method to assess the potential contribution of projects in the achievements of the final EEGI goal, engaging projects to join a sort of community (EEGI labelled projects) where interaction, information exchange, knowledge sharing, common approaches and dissemination activities would be motivated, accelerating the delivery of a higher European added value. The process of enquiry, application, selection, awarding and labelling was set up and successfully applied by GRID+. Collaboration between projects (and especially EEGI-labelled projects) was made real by means of a program of interaction initiatives, where project managers could effectively exchange experiences and lessons learned on subjects of common interest. With the aim of rationalizing and stabilizing the knowledge produced by projects avoiding the loss of experience which often takes place at the end of a project, GRID+ developed, tested and launched a web-based knowledge sharing platform called GridInnovationOnline: this platform has been populated with the results from several European and national projects and represents an effective asset to leverage for the future. Additional tools were developed for projects in view of their optimized deliveries: a set of metrics for the evaluation of the extent and effectiveness of the project contribution to the achievement of the goals of the EEGI roadmap was set up and delivered, in the form of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and their quantification; being the EEGI community focused on TRL 5-7 (demonstration levels) it was deemed important to evaluate the factors influencing the potential of a demonstration project to be scaled up in similar boundary conditions or to be replicated in different regions with different conditions and regulations: to this aim a method and a tool was developed and validated for a project self-evaluation of the scalability and replicability potential. Finally, with the aim of contributing to rationalize and stabilize the demonstration funding, an analysis was carried out of the funding mechanisms adopted in several European countries and abroad and a proposal of a specific funding route involving Member States, regulators and network operators was formulated.
Project Context and Objectives:
Energy technology is vital if Europe's objectives for 2020 and 2050 are to be achieved. Strong action is needed to reduce carbon emissions and limit climate change, and to ensure security of energy supply and competitiveness of European companies. However, certain constraints hamper the development and widespread application of energy technologies; a chronic underinvestment affected this sector since the late 1980s. The European Strategic Energy Technology plan (SET-Plan) aims to help achieve European objectives and face the challenges of this sector by increasing research, reducing costs and improving performance of existing technologies, encouraging their commercial implementation, and, in the longer term, supporting the deployment of a new generation of low carbon technologies. The SET-Plan has received a strong political support from the European Council and from the European Parliament, both underlining the need of an increased level of investment (both public and private), confirming the use of the present financial instruments to implement to SET-Plan (i.e: HORIZON 2020, the European Economic Recovery Plan, the NER300) and fostering the creation and operation of the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) and of the European Industrial Initiatives (EII). The EIIs gather outstanding energy stakeholders, under the lead of industrial players, to elaborate and implement plans to structure the European efforts towards the goals of the SET-Plan. EIIs have the aim to boost research, demonstration and innovation to accelerate the development and deployment of low carbon energy technologies, leveraging a strong public and private partnership. The European Electricity Grid Initiative (EEGI) was implemented to accelerate innovation in the European electricity networks. The EEGI programme focuses on system innovation rather than on technology innovation, in view of integrating and validating new technologies and management processes under real life working conditions. The GRID+ project has been set up to act as a support team to the EEGI (the partners are research centres, consulting bodies, universities in close coordination with ENTSO-E and EDSO4SG) to assist the Implementation Plan over 2012-2014 with the following tasks:
• Encouraging and assisting cooperation between Member States in view of clustering national demonstration projects, mapping them to the implementation plan of the Initiative, thus leveraging on potential complementarities and fostering the extraction of the maximum European added value, thus ensuring an optimal use of resources;
• Fostering cooperation among projects, sharing knowledge for deployment, based on reliable scaling-up and replication rules;
• Further developing and upgrading the Implementation Plan by mapping projects supported at Members States and EU level together with their investment needs, while monitoring cost and benefits using appropriate KPIs;
• Monitoring the technological progress of the EEGI Implementation Plan;
• Addressing cross-cutting issues at SET-Plan level in close coordination and cooperation with other EII teams and initiatives (e.g. Wind, Solar, Electric Cars, Smart Cities etc.);
• Ensuring the continuous link between the EEGI and other smart grid initiatives, within the SET-Plan perimeter (e.g. EERA JP on Smart Grids, KIC Inno-energy, ERA-NET Smart Grids etc.) and other continental (US, Asia, Australia) or international (IEA, G8-G20, CEM, ISGAN) contexts, to facilitate the dialogue, cooperation and experience sharing, validating the results obtained within the EEGI through peer-comparison, and assessing the initiative’s choices through international confrontation.
Project Results:
The collective roadmap upgrading, launched in early 2012, has allowed transmission and distribution operators to shape up upgraded clusters (and their functional objectives) for their research and innovation activities according to similar value chains. The single overarching goal of the EEGI Research and Innovation (R&I) Roadmap is: “to allow European electricity networks continuously deliver an effective flexible capacity to integrate actions of grid users at affordable costs”.
The EEGI roadmap 2012-2014 aims at delivering a portfolio of innovative pathways for preparing European electricity networks to enable the ambitious 2050 agenda adopted by European Member States: a low carbon economy leaning on the three pillars of European energy policy, i.e. sustainability, energy market competitiveness, and security of supply. The enabling capability of electrical networks means their effective flexible capacity to connect renewable electricity generation (sustainability), serving customers according to affordable electricity pricing (market competitiveness), while keeping the system reliability at levels compatible with societal needs (security of supply). The electrical networks must be ready to provide connection solutions for all grid users going from existing and new generation (e.g. RES) to existing and new demands (e.g. electric vehicles), while combining with the other industrial initiatives to be in line with the SET Plan orientations. Overall, the EEGI R&I roadmap focuses on the enabling factors that network operators must put in place to face whatever energy scenarios occur between 2015 and 2050.
Five Research and Innovation clusters are outlined by transmission system operators, each composed of several Functional Objectives:
• C1 - Grid architectures:
o T1: Definition of scenarios for pan-European network scenarios
o T2: Planning methodology for the future pan-European transmission system
o T14: Towards increasing public acceptance of transmission infrastructures
• C2 - Power technologies:
o T3: Demonstration of power technologies to increase the network flexibility and operation means
o T4: Demonstration of novel network architectures
o T5: Interfaces for large-scale demonstration of renewables integration
• C3 - Network operation:
o T6: Innovative tools and methods to observe and control the pan-European networks
o T7: Innovative tools and methods for coordinated operation with stability margin evaluation
o T8: Improved training tools and methods to ensure better coordination at the regional and pan-European levels
o T9: Innovative tools and approaches for pan-European network reliability assessment
• C4 - Market design:
o T10: Advanced pan-European market tools for ancillary services and balancing, including active demand management
o T11: Advanced tools for capacity allocation and congestion management
o T12: Tools and market mechanisms for ensuring system adequacy and efficiency in electric systems integrating very large amounts of RES generation
• C5 - Asset management:
o T15: Developing approaches to determine and maximize the lifetime of critical power components for existing and future networks
o T16: Development and validation of tools which optimize asset maintenance at the system level, based on quantitative cost-benefits analysis
o T17: Demonstration of new asset management approaches at EU level
Five Research and Innovation clusters are outlined by distribution system operators, each composed of several Functional Objectives:
• C1 – Integration of smart customers:
o D1: Active demand and increased flexibility
o D2: Energy efficiency from integration of smart homes
• C2 – Integration of DER and new uses:
o D3: DSO integration of small DER
o D4: System integration of medium DER
o D5: Integration of storage in network management
o D6: Infrastructures to host EV/PHEV
• C3 – Network operation:
o D7: Monitoring and control of LV networks
o D8: Automation and control of MV networks
o D9: Network management tools
o D10: Smart meters data processing
• C4 – Network planning and asset management:
o D11: New planning approaches for distribution networks
o D12: Asset management
• C5 – Market design:
o D13: Novel approaches for market design analysis
Five Functional objectives were evidenced at the interface between transmission and distribution, and more specifically:
• C1 – Joint TSO/DSO activities:
o TD1: Increased observability of the distribution system for transmission network management and control
o TD2: The integration of demand side management at DSO level into TSO operation
o TD3: Ancillary services provided through DSOs
o TD4: Improved defense and restoration plans
o TD5: Methodologies for scaling-up and replicating
The investment needed to achieve the goals of the roadmap is estimated in about 2.1 b€
In view of completing the overall picture of the on-going activities in the field of smart grids at global level, thus complementing the work in progress within the EC-JRC, a survey was carried out, based on public documents and leveraging the strong relationship with worldwide smart grids organisations. In particular, project being conducted in USA, Brazil, China, Corea and Australia were surveyed and analysed. The main conclusions of the survey can be summarized as follows:
• In each of the countries considered, the smart grid forms a vital part of government strategy to achieve the common goals of energy security and low carbon economic growth. Only the smart grid can integrate distributed renewable generation into the power system, which permits countries to support their energy independence while reducing their carbon footprint. The smart grid fosters innovation and economic growth fueled by skills development and higher employment levels. It presents unique economic opportunities for industry and individuals to profit by engaging in behaviors which help achieve important societal goals like energy security and decarbonization.
• The projects considered evidence the fact that smart grids do exist all around the world. It is apparent that in America there is a strong focus on peak load reduction technology and dynamic pricing tariff pilots (whereas in Europe more emphasis is placed on improving energy efficiency and reducing emissions through the use of more decentralized means of production). In the Asia-Pacific region drivers vary country to country – from modernizing and improving grid reliability in China, to techniques for load management in Australia.
• In the developed world (in the U.S for example) most electrical grids were built in the post-World War II period. In these countries, electricity demand is growing and load profiles are changing, putting strains on aging infrastructure. In the more recently developed countries this issue is less important, but on the other hand transmission grids usually need to be extended and interconnected.
• It is fundamental that governments put strong efforts and investments in the development of smart grid applications, and mainly in demonstration projects, and that the local authorities support the start of these initiatives. Actually this is the case for all the countries considered, and in particular: China: 100 b$, South Korea 34.5 b$, U.S. 3.4 b$ and Australia 100 m$.
• The most difficult challenge to a successful smart grid lies in winning consumer support. Without it, the smart grid cannot exist and it cannot deliver its promised benefits. Winning consumer support depends on a radical change in thinking by utilities about their customers and by consumers about electricity.
• Governments can be an effective mediator between the various stakeholders involved in smart grid deployment.
GRID+ has conducted, based on a specific request by the Commission, a survey of projects aimed at researching and/or demonstrating grid-connected storage technologies. The total number of projects mapped reaches 331, totaling 2,6 b€ in investment have been tracked. The following main findings can be drawn from the storage mapping exercise:
• Europe as a whole is betting heavily on batteries and is seriously investing in Power-to-gas and thermal storage. Most of these developments concern other than centralized storage.
• Most efforts on storage are research efforts.
• Although many more projects cover the distribution and the end-user level, large and concentrated investments can be seen in transmission and generation-based storage.
• For the years to come we may expect many demo and pilot projects on distributed/local electrochemical, chemical and thermal storage as the current generation of research matures.
• National governments are the main source of funding, although the EC's share is relatively high in comparison to general R&D spending in the EU.
With the aim of assessing the level of achievement of the goals of the EEGI roadmap, a gap analysis was conducted considering the different Clusters and Functional Objectives of the EEGI document. For each of the items, a thorough analysis was carried out considering the outstanding projects contributing to the knowledge of the reference subject. Each Functional Objective was analysed at the light of maturity categories (e.g. hardware, software, integration into the system, business model, regulatory framework, stakeholders involvement etc.), and assessed in terms of a maturity level to give indication about the level of advancement of the solutions considered (e.g. needing additional research, ready for deployment etc.). Tables and graphs were elaborated, as extensively explained in the related project deliverables. However, in very brief words, the big picture for transmission system R&I can be seen that in general, much work remains to be done in a close collaboration between network operators and technology providers: Power technologies (T3), renewables integration (T5) and planning tools (T2) are well advanced, while research work is urgent on public acceptance (T14), residual asset life evaluation (T15) and advanced pan-European market tools for ancillary services and balancing, including active demand management (T10). For the TSO-DSO interface, the analysis across all functional objectives, shows that the maturity categories needing more basic research appear to be those related to economic aspects (business models and cost-benefits analysis) and the regulatory aspects. Finally, the DSO cluster analysis showed that the FOs that require more efforts are D12 (Novel approaches to asset management), D5 (Integration of storage in network management), D6 (Integration of infrastructure to host Electrical Vehicles) and D3 (Integration of DER at LV level). In terms of maturity categories, attention shall be devoted to “regulatory framework”, “stakeholders involvement” and “business models”: in these categories fundamental research with the academia must be closely connected to the actual performances of the networks and pilot projects involving real networks and customers have to be realised in order to obtain realistic figures and measured performances.
1.4 Assessing performances and leveraging the projects that can offer an outstanding contribution to the EEGI goals
Given the vast amount of Smart Grid projects running in Europe, a mechanism to highlight those projects that are of central interest to the EEGI and with the spirit of its objectives has been set up within GRID+ and has been applied as “Labelling scheme”. The EEGI Label has the aim to highlight to the EEGI those projects of particular interest, providing a system for validating projects that fall into the scope of the EEGI programme. The labelling process was considered by the EEGI for a total of 37 projects, after the approval of the labelling scheme.
Research and innovation activities and projects are carried out to deliver new knowledge and solutions and to demonstrate the viability and performances of smart grids technologies as applied under the boundary conditions (structure, market, regulation, social etc.) of the EU28. As seen from the EEGI, projects can also be considered in terms of their potential contribution towards the achievement of the EEGI roadmap overarching goals. To this aim, GRID+ has set up a system of metrics, based on the concept of Key Performances Indicators KPIs) finalized at supporting the monitoring process of the R&I activities, thus effectively showing the progress of delivering the expected new knowledge and solutions needed to meet the EEGI roadmap overarching goals and at supporting the R&I management process which links the expected impacts of each R&I project (national and/or European) with the deployment conditions of the resulting most promising knowledge, provided that this knowledge has been shown to be scalable and replicable by network operators at affordable costs. The innovations that contribute to the EEGI Roadmap are supported by two kinds of KPIs, namely implementation effectiveness KPI (which measures the progress of research and innovation activities, as percentage of completion of a functional objective or a set of functional objectives within any of the clusters defined in the EEGI Roadmap) and expected impact KPIs (which estimate the contribution of the new R&I achievements gained within the EEGI Roadmap). Increasing network capacity and/or system flexibility can be monitored through seven specific KPIs (six KPIs that are common to TSOs and DSOs and one additional that is applicable to DSOs):
o B.1 Increased RES and DER hosting capacity.
o B.2 Reduced energy curtailment of RES and DER.
o B.3 Power quality and quality of supply.
o B.4 Extended asset life time.
o B.5 Increased flexibility from energy players.
o B.6 Improved competitiveness of the electricity market.
o B.7 Increased hosting capacity for electric vehicles (EVs) and other new loads.
The evaluation of KPIs has been trial tested on two major EEGI labelled projects (i.e. GRID4EU and TWENTIES), demonstrating their validity and the opportunities to extend this type of analysis to other projects, thus complementing the internal assessment of project performances.
1.5 Scaling up and replicating project results
Most smart grid projects are still in the R&I or the demonstration phases. The full roll-out of the tested solutions requires a suitable degree of scalability and replicability to avoid that demonstrators remain local experimental exercises.
• Scalability can be defined as the ability of a system to change its scale in order to meet growing volumes of demand, under similar boundary conditions.
• Replicability denotes the property of a system that allows it to be duplicated at another location or time.
The evaluation of the scalability and replicability potential of a project are the preliminary phase to ensure a successful scaling-up and replication successfully: in fact this assessment points out during the project development phase the potential barriers and difficulties that the project may encounter when the size of the project needs to be enlarged to a wider area or when the project results need to be replicated elsewhere. GRID+ has conducted a wide research to set up the factors influencing the scalability and replicability potential and has proposed a methodology to be adopted by project managers for a self-assessment of these important features. The method has also been implemented in an on-line software tool to increase the accessibility of the method. Influencing factors have been classified into three main categories, namely: technical, economical and regulatory. Projects are analysed at the light of several sub criteria for each factor, and in particular, for scalability:
• Technical factors:
o Modularity: engineering technique to build up a system by combining smaller subsystems;
o Technology Evolution: the technology obsolescence during the project development must be considered in systems characterised by a long service life;
o Interface Design: defines the interactions among components in the solution. Its importance is proportional to the number of interactions;
o Integration: the software tools designed for the solution need to be able to withstand the increased size when scaling up;
o Infrastructure Compatibility: to ensure that scaling-up will not encounter limits in size of infrastructure
• Economic factors:
o Economies of Scale: percentage increase in costs is lower than the percentage increase in project size.
o Profitability: The percentage increase in benefits is higher than the percentage increase in project size
• Regulatory factors:
o Regulatory Issues: Regulation should allow to scaling-up of the project up to the extent desired
o Acceptance: the assessment of stakeholders acceptance is necessary to guarantee the project success.
The application of the assessment methodology to a series of on-going major smart grids projects in Europe has revealed that barriers arising from technical factors can be most easily overcome by the projects; the influence on the lifting of barriers of economic and regulatory and stakeholder-related factors is limited and requires considerable effort. More in detail:
• Standardization requires an increased attention.
• Compatibility analysis (e.g. limits imposed by the infrastructure) should be taken into account.
• The attention on economic potential by carrying out cost-benefit analysis and by taking into account changing macro-economic environments should be increased.
• Stakeholder involvement (consent and acceptance) requires an increased attention (in both convincing stakeholders to participate and in establishing rules to involve and make participate stakeholders).
• The impact of the dependency on regulatory frameworks and the impact of market design require more attention. More uniformity in economic regulation (similar to the technical regulation) might be envisaged.
1.6 Sharing knowledge in the ERA community
The overarching goal of GRID+ is to increase the access to and the use of information and knowledge from public deliverables of R&I projects (mainly, but not restricted to, EU-funded projects). The scheme proposed in the project takes into account the need to report and share project outcomes while preserving legitimate intellectual property and respect existing regulated frameworks for dissemination and sharing of knowledge of public funded projects under FP7, H2020 or any other European or National funding programme. The scheme seeks to create a common framework for EEGI-relevant projects in the European Research Area (ERA), providing main principles and tools to sustain it and make it work efficiently. A Knowledge Sharing Platform (KSP) has been implemented and equipped with a search engine, to structure the new knowledge generated by R&I projects contributing to the EEGI roadmap.
The tool is available at the following url: http://www.gridinnovation-on-line.eu/
The knowledge sharing platform is made of a set of articles (namely state-of-the-art, project and knowledge articles), including a set of keywords associated to hyperlinks to allow visitors to navigate between articles within the platform. An interactive template dedicated to knowledge providers willing to input their results into the KSP displays the keywords required to support the description of the output. Two major categories are likely to interact within the KSP: knowledge providers (“contributors”) and knowledge seekers (“visitors”). The former are project partners and they produce and share the knowledge. The latter want to learn and benefit from the existing knowledge. The platform has been populated by a significant number of articles, provided by the different projects involved with the EEGI and some national projects.
1.7 Analysis of the electric networks R&I funding in Europe
Network R&I investments might be hampered by:
• a lack of internal funding capability to cover their own increasing personnel costs, even though some other players, who operate in the free market and are involved in the R&I collaborative activities, are ready to timely invest,
• a lack of regulatory support to charge these costs to the tariffs, even though the Third Energy Package encourages regulators to have these costs recognized in the tariff structure since the implementation of the 2009 IEM Directive,
• the intrinsic differences between transmission and distribution operators when it comes to financing Research and Innovation activities by the tariffs: Transmission Operators have a legal mandate at European level to plan and perform R&I activities of added value at national or European level. The number of separate TSOs organizations in Europe (41) makes the monitoring of costs and benefits of R&I activities much easier for National Regulatory Authorities than the ones of distribution operators (5000+ different organizations in Europe), which have no legal mandate to perform such R&I activities.
New adequate regulatory schemes for R&I funding are shown to be possible, thanks to the Third Energy Package and the attempts of several Member States: R&I investments, whether in line with the EEGI roadmap or dedicated to address national issues, can be charged by the network operators to the national tariffs. Yet, the EEGI network players have different business models and regulatory frameworks: thus funding approaches at European level linked to each national regulatory mechanism might lead to heterogeneous figures which, in turn, will impair timely R&I cooperation at EU level, following the agenda of the EEGI Roadmap. A simple solution to address this issue for Transmission System Operators is proposed. Indeed, R&I activities are part of the mandates assigned to the TSOs. CEER could delineate over three years (the duration of an implementation plan of the EEGI R&I Roadmap) the lump sum which TSOs contributing to the EEGI roadmap implementation have to forecast in their future R&I investments beyond what they foresee at national level : each NRA would then agree over three years about the right amount of tariff funding which would cover the contribution of its willing TSO to the R&I roadmap implementation. This “tariff-based funding” is earmarked for research and innovation activities only by each participating Member State. Each participating TSO is then capable of anticipating on staff needs and subcontracting resources to academia or any other research performer to cover the three-year joint R&I activities described in the implementation plan. As a counterpart, ENTSO-E would then be in charge of R&I coordination activities for TSOs. For Distribution Operators, the legal mandate for research and innovation does not exist. However, a process similar to the one suggested for TSOs could be looked upon via CEER for the benefits of DSOs willing to participate in R&I projects having European Added Value. This would complement at European level the existing national schemes which have been tested and are now used in several Member States, and described in the annexes. CEER could delineate a maximum lump sum of R&I investments to perform research and development activities jointly. This “tariff-based funding” is then earmarked for research and innovation activities only by the NRA of each participating Member State. Each participating DSO is then also capable of anticipating on staff needs and subcontracting resources to academia or any other research performer to cover the three-year joint R&I activities described in the EEGI implementation plan. Financing will lean on funding schemes in accordance with the innovation maturity. The high number of DSOs in Europe emphasizes the crucial needs of joint R&I work for replication studies accompanying demonstration projects and the implementation of knowledge sharing processes in order to maximize the probability of speedy deployment of innovative network solutions tested by only a few leading DSOs. As a counterpart, EDSO4SG would then be in charge of R&I coordination activities for DSOs. Overall, the close cooperation between network operators and regulators for innovation demonstrations, with a focus on scaling and replication studies of the tested solutions, will reinforce the accountability and transparency of the whole innovation process at EU level where network operators have indeed a major contribution.
Potential Impact:
Knowledge sharing already exists in Europe and international arena through different mechanisms and at different levels such as conferences, seminars, workshops, project public publications and events: many of these take place during the life of the project and are already included in their agendas. However there are still many opportunities and gaps to further enhance and boost the processes addressing some barriers that limit impact of business as usual activities.
The overarching goal of GRID+ is to increase the access to and the use of information and knowledge from public deliverables of R&I projects (mainly, but not restricted to, EU-funded projects). The scheme proposed in the project takes into account the need to report and share project outcomes while preserving legitimate intellectual property and respect existing regulated frameworks for dissemination and sharing of knowledge of public funded projects under FP7, H2020 or any other European or National funding programme. The scheme seeks to create a common framework for EEGI-relevant projects in the European Research Area (ERA), providing main principles and tools to sustain it and make it work efficiently. The involvement of projects, together with countries and regions and their public-funding programme owners and managers is therefore essential to achieve a more coordinated approach in Knowledge Sharing requirements and activities, while addressing all elements in the knowledge cycle. Additionally, the scheme aims at providing a clear framework enhancing current practices of knowledge sharing and dissemination by public funded projects, under the umbrella of EEGI and support from EEGI-Team as well as its linked support actions such as the GRID+ project. the main pillars of the knowledge sharing schemes are:
• Projects are the main seed and source of knowledge generation in this scheme, regardless of regional, national or European nature. The scheme will facilitate specific actions of projects using EEGI wide links to enhance impact trough active dissemination of project activities related to knowledge sharing. EEGI Monitoring activities will also be fed by projects, assessing progress and analysing gaps in the EEGI developments.
• Interactions take place in dedicated and planned workshops, webinars, thematic panel sessions, or any other form of bidirectional open exchange of information between projects or initiatives, arranged to address specific issues and gaps in the EEGI clusters after analysis and study of its progress by EEGI-Team and its support actions. Establishing active and organised dialogue between projects; facilitating and making bridges among projects with potential synergies are the main goals here. While the outcomes of interactions are useful for the whole community of stakeholders, they are also for the EEGI and its support actions.
The knowledge sharing scheme proposed in the frame of GRID+ tackles the matter in a more coordinated approach, with common principles, and allowing flexibility for bottom-up approaches as well. A way of fostering new ideas in the knowledge generation process is avoiding the isolation and fostering cooperation. Improving Knowledge Sharing offers different viewpoints and solutions to common problems.
Benefits to sharing knowledge include:
• Enhancement of effectiveness and efficiency by spreading good ideas and practices.
• Cost effectiveness – knowledge is developed and then re-used by other stakeholders.
• Time savings - Professionals learn from their mistakes and those of others (“lessons learnt”).
• More sophisticated ideas, insights and information sources are applied to problems resulting in better solutions.
• Respectful ways of using knowledge – with attribution and permission - benefit the one who generates the knowledge and the one who shares it.
The drivers and needs to foster and establish a knowledge sharing scheme are:
• Establish common framework and principles
• Structure new knowledge to be shared
• Ensure and facilitate access and availability of knowledge generated
• Foster interaction and mutual-learning among projects
• Increase awareness and understanding by wider public
• Knowledge sharing refers to the processes that go beyond mandatory dissemination of public information in projects, fostering interactions among public-funded projects and enhancing the awareness and access to project outcomes, best practices and experiences with the support of key stakeholders. Furthermore, it also aims at making information about foreground available and accessible and at providing a set of commonly recognized indicators to European grid operators through a knowledge platform.
• Interactions involve bringing together ongoing projects through active participation in seminars, workshops, forums of discussions or other events organized by or with cooperation of GRID+, and with the purpose of sharing information between ongoing projects regardless of their public source of financing. These can be done both in a coordinated top-down approach but also maximizing the impact of planned activities of projects.
• Project outputs and outcomes are described in public deliverables, publications, articles, reports, recommendations, best practices and lessons learned, description of functionalities and foreground obtained, indicators. EEGI-labelled projects commit to inform EEGI-Team about their progress and outputs, and input related knowledge in the Knowledge Sharing Platform implemented by GRID+.
• Added Value for projects: Projects with EEGI label shall naturally commit to this scheme either voluntarily or by contractual agreement with the funding organisation. However the scheme will not be limited to EEGI projects only. In return, participating projects will benefit from:
• Accelerated project progress by learning from others through ad-hoc interactions
• Support by the overarching network of stakeholders in the EEGI and GRID+
• Facilitated access to tools and products developed for projects
• Increased visibility and impact through active dissemination of Knowledge Sharing
Future projects implemented within the European Union and Associated States, regardless the source of public finance, shall foresee commitment, activities and cooperation within this scheme in order to ensure feasibility of their contribution to the EEGI through this scheme. This is already the case in latest FP7 projects, Horizon2020, and some National Projects. In addition to future EEGI projects on the pipe, on-going and past smart grids projects of relevant impact should be motivated to adhere and join this scheme. This could be proposed by project leaders, but also through indication of the EEGI-Team members adopting these on a case by case basis, ensuring the medium and long term access to their outcomes. Use of available existing project networks will also be fostered for this purpose.
A Knowledge Sharing Platform (KSP) has been implemented, equipped with a search engine, to structure the new knowledge generated by R&I projects contributing to the EEGI roadmap.
The tool is available at the following url: http://www.gridinnovation-on-line.eu/
The knowledge sharing platform is made of a set of articles, including a set of keywords associated to hyperlinks to allow visitors to navigate between articles within the platform. An interactive template dedicated to knowledge providers willing to input their results into the KSP displays the keywords required to support the description of the output.
Knowledge providers comprise EEGI project participants as well as public and private research organizations (e.g. technical centers) make up the body of knowledge providers (“contributors”). Knowledge providers are interested in valuing their knowledge or their know-how, looking for partners to develop non-mature technologies or solutions, or even looking for business opportunities for their research outputs. Knowledge providers need an accessible dissemination area, market opportunities, or technical support (different from their own expertise).
Two major categories are likely to interact within the KSP: knowledge providers (“contributors”) and knowledge seekers (“visitors”). The former are project partners and they produce and share the knowledge. The latter want to learn and benefit from the existing knowledge.
Knowledge seekers (“visitors”) are typically facing a knowledge gap and are eager to overcome this barrier. They are smart grid market players (grid operators, manufacturers, etc.) who are looking for a brand new solution (technology, methodology, product, etc.) or stakeholders who are interested in the contribution of an innovation towards the society or the impact regarding the environment (policy makers, the financial community, NGOs, press and media, etc.).
7.2.3 Articles
All articles are structured in the same way: the backbone of any article remains unchangeable and systematically contains a list of paramount information. Each article consists therefore of:
• Title stating in a short sentence (i.e. roughly ten words) the topic of the article;
• Abstract describing in approximately 50 words the context and outputs of the article;
• List of keywords (associated to tags, as displayed in the guided search tool);
• Detailed description made up of approximately 1000 words;
• Access to download related documents (e.g. deliverable reports).
State of the art article
The new knowledge is positioned within a state-of-the-art framework, in order to provide a comprehensive view of the projects and the new R&I outputs.
Project article
A project article is related to a specific project that addresses various challenges of a cluster. Its content provides the general description of the project and links to the related knowledge articles
A Knowledge article is devoted to one specific R&I result. Its content provides the general description of the research output (the new knowledge) and refers to a state-of-the art article. Each article is associated to a set of tags (hyperlinks) which allow implementing search functions and hyperlink navigation (for the knowledge seeker).
The Innovation library
The Innovation library is the heart of the portal. Its functions are the following:
• to provide a guided search tool;
• to allow the visitors to easily reach the information via tags; and
• to enable the contributors to input their R&I outputs (in the forms of articles) with a user-friendly template.
List of Websites:
www.gridplus.eu
contact details: michele.denigris@rse-web.it