The objective of FleXunity project is to deploy novel services for retailers and aggregators, enhanced by Virtual Power Plant (VPP) technology empowered with AI algorithms that can be focused on minimizing the cost of energy (bought in the wholesale market) and optimizing the use of distributed renewables from the utility or community portfolio. The proposed energy community approach will promote active participation of end-users (community members) valuating their flexibility and energy sharing actions, which will be supported by secure transaction mechanisms with technologies such as blockchain to validate energy transactions. These services will include a tariff structure optimisation design for the Energy Community to be able to meet the needs of the Transmission System Operator (TSO) by aggregating the flexibility to participate in balancing and ancillary services markets as a Balance Service Provider (BSPs) or provide Demand Response (DR) services to the Distribution System Operators (DSO). The key project outcomes will be achieved by testing and demonstrating the proposed services in two distinct pilots with very different market conditions: UK energy market (open mature market); Iberia energy market (in transformation – opening to use flexibility from demand-side). Given the nonexistence of a common legal framework across Europe, this will help us to validate different stakeholder benefits in close and open energy markets, which will enhance the full commercial roll-out after this 2-year project. These envisaged innovative services will allow utilities to maximize their profit and enable new business models from managing multiple energy flexibility assets, introducing flexibility as a new tradable asset in their business portfolios, and allow energy costs savings sharing with end-users, enhancing the use of renewables and support energy security and climate change challenges.

The transition towards a low-carbon economy is significantly transforming the power system from a unidirectional, centralised and fossil-based system towards a bidirectional, distributed and renewable-based one. In this context, DSOs and TSOs are facing more complex grid operations, including challenges like reverse power flows, additional power flows in transmission systems and grid stability issues. Available tools for grid management in this changing environment have often underperformed for several reasons (e.g. unavailability of grid models, data management restrictions, use of conventional approaches to the application algorithms, etc.). INTERPRETER will overcome limitations of existing tools through a modular grid management solution consisting of a set of 10 software applications for an optimal design, planning, operation and maintenance of the electricity grid – with a special focus on the distribution network – that will be offered to grid operators through an open-source interoperable platform. These tools will support DSOs and TSOs to move from a traditional grid management approach to an active system management approach, considering the rapid deployment of distributed energy resources as well as growing environmental concerns. INTERPRETER activities will be conducted by a strong and well-balanced consortium composed by 5 RTOs, 2 DSOs, 1 SW developer company leader in its sector and 1 SME specialised in communication & dissemination. The project includes an ambitious validation phase, in which the solutions will be tested in 3 pilots in Belgium, Denmark and Spain, thus ensuring a high replicability across Europe. Overall, the project aims to achieve an annual economic impact in the project pilots from investment deferrals of 36.6 M€ due to the remuneration of assets and of 28.15 M€ due to the amortisation of the capacity assets, as well as a recovery of 665,576 € from non-technical losses detection and 11,422 € from reduced outage frequency.

The main objective of BigDataOcean is to enable maritime big data scenarios for EU-based companies, organisations and scientists, through a multi-segment platform that will combine data of different velocity, variety and volume under an inter-linked, trusted, multilingual engine to produce a big-data repository of value and veracity back to the participants and local communities. BigDataOcean aims to capitalise on existing modern technological breakthroughs in the areas of the big data driven economy, and roll out a completely new value chain of interrelated data streams coming from diverse sectors and languages and residing on cross technology innovations being delivered in different formats (as well in different states, e.g. structured/unstructured, real-time/batches) in order to revolutionise the way maritime-related industries work, showcasing a huge and realistic economic, societal and environmental impact that is being achieved by introducing an economy of knowledge into a traditional sector which does not operate in an orchestrated manner and is rather fragmented. This infrastructure will be combined with four strong pilots that will bring into BigDataOcean a huge amount of data (in TBs) in order to develop the largest maritime database as a resource of collaborative, data-driven intelligence. BigDataOcean will give participants the capability to upload both private and public resources of data, and interrelate them over public and private queries and diagrams. The BigDataOcean system backbone will be domain-agnostic and interoperable with the most popular and established data processing technologies and sensor types, and will be capable of conforming to various different operation systems that one can nowadays meet. Based on the consortium’s early market analysis, the project will break even and will be viable from its start (2020) and will return the initial investment of EU-commission by 2025 (ROI).

This project aims to design and develop novel Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools and techniques that facilitate scalable and secure information systems and data exchange between Transmission System Operator (TSO) and Distribution System Operator (DSO). The three novel aspects of ICT tools and techniques to be developed in the project are: scalability – ability to deal with new users and increasingly larger volumes of information and data; security – protection against external threats and attacks; and interoperability –information exchange and communications based on existing and emerging international smart grid ICT standards. The project focuses on TSO-DSO interoperability. While TSO-TSO interoperability is currently well established by ENTSO-E through implementation of the Common Grid Model Exchange System, TSO-DSO interoperability will also benefit future TSO-TSO interoperability. In this context the project will also consider DSO to other Market-participants (DSOs, Aggregators, Distributed Energy Resource Operators, Micro-grid Operators) and information or data access portals that enable business processes involving relevant actors in the electrical power sector. Beyond state-of-the-art progress that will be achieved: Fully defined interface specifications for TSO-DSO information exchange interfaces based on Use Case analysis and IEC 61970/61968/62325 standards to support highly automated information exchange and network analysis. Fully defined interface specifications for information exchange between DSOs and market participants based on Use Case analysis and IEC 61850 and IEC 62325 standards to support highly automated information exchanges. Role-based access control that securely accommodates new data requirements and unbundling processes. A specified suite of ICT protocols and integration with the defined interfaces. Proof of Concept using field tests and demonstration with industry specification at both TSO and DSO levels.

The current high-speed deployment rate of non-programmable Renewable Energy Sources (RES) is making transmission network planning activities more and more complex and affected by a high level of uncertainty. Because network investments are capital intensive and the lifetime of the infrastructure spans several decades, it may happen that when a new line is commissioned it is no longer the best option and it might be partially regarded as a stranded cost. There is an on-going debate on the selection of the more effective technologies that could contribute to system flexibility. This category doesn’t only include grid technologies, but also storage elements and flexible demand, both located in transmission or provided by opportunely aggregated distributed energy sources located in distribution networks. FlexPlanning aims at creating a new tool for optimizing transmission and distribution grid planning, considering the placement of flexibility elements as an alternative to traditional grid planning. This approach aims at helping to reduce overall power system costs i.e. infrastructure deployment and operation costs, the latter in terms of procurement of energy and system services. FlexPlan is going to take into account environmental impact and footprint (impact on air quality for thermal generation, carbon footprint, impact on landscape of new T&D lines). A pre-processing tool is also created to determine location, size and associated costs for storage and flexible demand candidates. The new planning tool is first validated and then used for analysing six detailed regional scenarios at 2030-2040-2050 in order to assess the potential role of storage and flexible resources. Pan-European scenarios are preliminarily elaborated in order to provide border conditions for the regional cases. Regulatory conclusions are drawn to analyse whether opportune incentivisation procedures could be put in place by the regulators wherever some consistent advantages are demonstrated.