Periodic Reporting for period 3 - FutureFlow (Designing eTrading Solutions for Electricity Balancing and Redispatching in Europe)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2019-01-01 do 2019-12-31
Main problem addressed:
Four European TSOs of Central-Eastern Europe (APG from Austria, ELES from Slovenia, MAVIR from Hungary and Transelectrica from Romania), together with power system experts from multiple research institutions, electricity retailers, IT providers and renewable electricity providers, joined effort to design a unique regional cooperation scheme that aims at designing Balancing and Redispatching markets and open it to new sources of flexibility and supporting these sources to participate on such markets competitively.
Why is it important for society?
An ambitious goal of the FutureFlow project is proving that in ten to fifteen year future consumer engagement and renewable energy sources including distributed generation and eventual supplementary technologies could replace the fossil-fuel based power plants on the segment of system flexibility and security provision when and only when proper cross border regional market integration mechanisms will be developed and put in place.
What are the overall objectives?
The overarching goal of the FutureFlow is to design and pilot test, at a plausible scale, comprehensive techno-economic models for open and non-discriminatory access of advanced consumers (DR) and distributed generators (DG) to the Regional Platform for ancillary/balancing and redispatching services. The main idea of the project is to design and implement cross-border balancing and redispatching mechanisms, including the Common Activation Functions (CAF) tailored to congested borders, based on a harmonized set of requirements for DR and DG to be able to compete in these markets.
Four European TSOs of Central-Eastern Europe (APG from Austria, ELES from Slovenia, MAVIR from Hungary and Transelectrica from Romania), together with power system experts from multiple research institutions, electricity retailers, IT providers and renewable electricity providers, joined effort to design a unique regional cooperation scheme that aims at designing Balancing and Redispatching markets and open it to new sources of flexibility and supporting these sources to participate on such markets competitively.
Why is it important for society?
An ambitious goal of the FutureFlow project is proving that in ten to fifteen year future consumer engagement and renewable energy sources including distributed generation and eventual supplementary technologies could replace the fossil-fuel based power plants on the segment of system flexibility and security provision when and only when proper cross border regional market integration mechanisms will be developed and put in place.
What are the overall objectives?
The overarching goal of the FutureFlow is to design and pilot test, at a plausible scale, comprehensive techno-economic models for open and non-discriminatory access of advanced consumers (DR) and distributed generators (DG) to the Regional Platform for ancillary/balancing and redispatching services. The main idea of the project is to design and implement cross-border balancing and redispatching mechanisms, including the Common Activation Functions (CAF) tailored to congested borders, based on a harmonized set of requirements for DR and DG to be able to compete in these markets.
"The FutureFlow project helped to strengthen the role of active consumers at the flexibility market
The key result of the FutureFlow project is to allow the extraction of all flexibility resources available in the power system. This extraordinary result helps the TSOs to hit the goal to offer direct market access to all balancing resources and, by this, they confirm their position as the most reliable ""system frequency manager"" also for the future. The evolution of the energy market towards a system with bulk generation from geographically concentrated wind and solar power and with a large part of it connected to voltage levels out of direct TSO control require solutions like FutureFlow to process the tremendously higher number of inputs and outputs from which the frequency signal will be dependent.
By FutureFlow, the electrical energy market is achieved in its ultimate form. The solution brings the ultimate transparency on the available system flexibility, leading to the completion of dimensions of the energy market unachieved until now by gathering full control on all balancing resources at real-time, cross border and cross voltage level. This solution compresses the features of energy market coupling for day-ahead and intraday into the timeframe of a few minutes. They are integrated with the latest achievements reached by TSOs for optimizing the calculation and sharing of balancing resources between control zones. The sharing of resources is not limited to the resources available at transmission level but can potentially reach all distributed generation and demand side resources connected to the grid, at whatever voltage level. Additionally, the FutureFlow algorithm allows a co-optimization of balancing and redispatch: this feature allows supporting the welfare maximization across all markets also for heavily congested systems.
As a direct consequence, the flexibility price has finally a clear chance to become the real price of wholesale electricity for the European market. If unconstrained marginal pricing for balancing and imbalances is chosen as a standard pricing practice, the view on the real volume of generation and demand available to modulate the frequency signal allows sending clear market prices about how much and what generation is needed.
In this project, all possible kinds of VPP structures have been tested. This has created an extremely composite library of business cases and solutions that can be further industrialized for applications in areas where the flex potential of e.g. small hydro has been remaining largely untapped, thus allowing the fast and quick inclusion of the VPP flexibility into the market.
The extension of this solutions at European scale offers an additional tool to improve the process to define the security perimeter of the CGM (common grid model) - no more operational points perfectly stable but completely out of the assessed security perimeter, or other comparable unexpected results. The tool could furthermore support an increased precision for cross zonal capacity calculations - with border adapting more flexibly to the congestions (no matter if internal or cross-border) for each 15-minutes market terms, as well as for calculating well-rounded cross-border cost allocations for PCI - including also valuation on balancing markets.
Thanks to its features, FutureFlow can become a cornerstone solution for the ultimate market integration of distributed generation and demand side and becoming a key tool for grid operators to tackle the challenges of the evolving European power system."
The key result of the FutureFlow project is to allow the extraction of all flexibility resources available in the power system. This extraordinary result helps the TSOs to hit the goal to offer direct market access to all balancing resources and, by this, they confirm their position as the most reliable ""system frequency manager"" also for the future. The evolution of the energy market towards a system with bulk generation from geographically concentrated wind and solar power and with a large part of it connected to voltage levels out of direct TSO control require solutions like FutureFlow to process the tremendously higher number of inputs and outputs from which the frequency signal will be dependent.
By FutureFlow, the electrical energy market is achieved in its ultimate form. The solution brings the ultimate transparency on the available system flexibility, leading to the completion of dimensions of the energy market unachieved until now by gathering full control on all balancing resources at real-time, cross border and cross voltage level. This solution compresses the features of energy market coupling for day-ahead and intraday into the timeframe of a few minutes. They are integrated with the latest achievements reached by TSOs for optimizing the calculation and sharing of balancing resources between control zones. The sharing of resources is not limited to the resources available at transmission level but can potentially reach all distributed generation and demand side resources connected to the grid, at whatever voltage level. Additionally, the FutureFlow algorithm allows a co-optimization of balancing and redispatch: this feature allows supporting the welfare maximization across all markets also for heavily congested systems.
As a direct consequence, the flexibility price has finally a clear chance to become the real price of wholesale electricity for the European market. If unconstrained marginal pricing for balancing and imbalances is chosen as a standard pricing practice, the view on the real volume of generation and demand available to modulate the frequency signal allows sending clear market prices about how much and what generation is needed.
In this project, all possible kinds of VPP structures have been tested. This has created an extremely composite library of business cases and solutions that can be further industrialized for applications in areas where the flex potential of e.g. small hydro has been remaining largely untapped, thus allowing the fast and quick inclusion of the VPP flexibility into the market.
The extension of this solutions at European scale offers an additional tool to improve the process to define the security perimeter of the CGM (common grid model) - no more operational points perfectly stable but completely out of the assessed security perimeter, or other comparable unexpected results. The tool could furthermore support an increased precision for cross zonal capacity calculations - with border adapting more flexibly to the congestions (no matter if internal or cross-border) for each 15-minutes market terms, as well as for calculating well-rounded cross-border cost allocations for PCI - including also valuation on balancing markets.
Thanks to its features, FutureFlow can become a cornerstone solution for the ultimate market integration of distributed generation and demand side and becoming a key tool for grid operators to tackle the challenges of the evolving European power system."
1. Within FutureFlow the prototype of the DR&DG Flexibility Aggregation Platform has been developed. This platform represents the link between the smallest control units (individual DR and DGs) and the regional balancing platform managed by the TSOs. In the project it was used in the field pilot tests with real DR and DGs taking part in the real time aFRR process.
2. The Regional Balancing and Redispatching Platform with Common Activation Function for aFRR activation has been developed. It optimizes the use of balancing resources located in different countries and enables the participation of DR&DG sources in corss border real-time balancing processes. The platform was used for field pilot tests in Austrian, Slovenian, Hungarian and Romanian power systems with actual DR&DG units taking part in the complex aFRR process. The platform is built on a secure and scalable infrastructure that conforms to major standards.
3. The Power Flow Method identifies the components of the power flows in the electricity system (loop flows, internal flows, exchange flows, transit flows, and PST flows). The method is suitable for identifying the “polluters” who are responsible for congestions in the transmission network and is also able to find the most efficient measures to eliminate the congestion.
4. In the first place the DEMOX environment has been developed as an alternative to the usage of the TSOs Load-Frequency Controlers (LFCs). The DEMOX represents a replica of the real LFC controller’s with the integrated real-time Common Activation Function. It also consists of some additional features such as the DR&DG prequalification module and the module for modeling a VPP.
5. The retailers and aggregators had a very responsible and critical duty in the project. They had to engage sufficient number of prosumers and distributed generators that are capable to take part in a very complex aFRR process. The aggregated pool of the DR&DG balancing units consists of more than 100 individual units with over 50 MW of upward and downward control power.
2. The Regional Balancing and Redispatching Platform with Common Activation Function for aFRR activation has been developed. It optimizes the use of balancing resources located in different countries and enables the participation of DR&DG sources in corss border real-time balancing processes. The platform was used for field pilot tests in Austrian, Slovenian, Hungarian and Romanian power systems with actual DR&DG units taking part in the complex aFRR process. The platform is built on a secure and scalable infrastructure that conforms to major standards.
3. The Power Flow Method identifies the components of the power flows in the electricity system (loop flows, internal flows, exchange flows, transit flows, and PST flows). The method is suitable for identifying the “polluters” who are responsible for congestions in the transmission network and is also able to find the most efficient measures to eliminate the congestion.
4. In the first place the DEMOX environment has been developed as an alternative to the usage of the TSOs Load-Frequency Controlers (LFCs). The DEMOX represents a replica of the real LFC controller’s with the integrated real-time Common Activation Function. It also consists of some additional features such as the DR&DG prequalification module and the module for modeling a VPP.
5. The retailers and aggregators had a very responsible and critical duty in the project. They had to engage sufficient number of prosumers and distributed generators that are capable to take part in a very complex aFRR process. The aggregated pool of the DR&DG balancing units consists of more than 100 individual units with over 50 MW of upward and downward control power.