Project description
Automated grid monitoring with a simple and cost-effective retrofit
Optimising power grid operation to pre-empt or react quickly to faults has always been both critical and challenging. With the increasing integration of renewables and emphasis on efficiency, this has become even more important. Current solutions require the installation of current and voltage sensors at every measurement point to accurately monitor and respond to grid events, requiring significant work and downtime. The Swiss SME Zaphiro Technologies has developed SynchroGuard, the first solution that can be retrofitted to existing distribution grids by taking advantage of voltage sensors already installed, without causing disruption. The EU-funded SynchroGuard project is helping the team take this real-time, cost-efficient technology for automated grid management to market.
Objective
SynchroGuard is a highly flexible and customisable solution for smart distribution grids, offering combined monitoring, control and fault management in one single solution. SynchroGuard provides to utility operators real-time visibility of the grid status, enables safe integration of renewable energy resources, and optimises grid operation for higher efficiency/reliability by quickly reacting or even pre-empting faults.
Competing solutions require both current and voltage sensors at every measurement point to get a complete snapshot of the monitored grid. This is extremely inefficient, as every time a voltage sensor must be installed, a cluster of nearby customers is temporarily disconnected.
In contrast, SynchroGuard is the first real-time and cost-effective solution that can be retrofitted to existing distribution grids without disruption, and provide fast response on transient grid events. The key innovation is the use of synchrophasor measurements, which are very frequent and time-synchronized measurements of voltage and current signals, taking advantage of voltage sensors already installed at the primary substation, and requiring only additional clamp-on current sensors, which are cheap and non-invasive.
The Distribution Automation (DA) and Substation Automation (SA) segments of the energy management system market already represent €6.5Bn and are expected to grow to €10Bn by 2021. Our initial market research in Europe shows that we can address a market of €1.6Bn with 150 utilities representing 2M substations, building on our initial market traction with utilities in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Hong Kong.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energy
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectrical engineeringpower engineeringelectric power distribution
- social sciencessociologyindustrial relationsautomation
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencedata exchange
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Programme(s)
- H2020-EU.3.3. - SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy Main Programme
- H2020-EU.2.1.1. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
- H2020-EU.2.3.1. - Mainstreaming SME support, especially through a dedicated instrument
Call for proposal
(opens in new window) H2020-SMEInst-2016-2017
See other projects for this callSub call
H2020-SMEINST-1-2016-2017
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
1024 Ecublens
Switzerland
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.