To achieve its energy goals EU needs to establish a geographically large market by initially improving its cross-border electricity interconnections. A geographically large market, based on imports and exports of electricity, could increase the level of competition, boost the EU’s security of electricity supply and integrate more renewables into energy markets. Electricity should, as far as possible, flow between Member States as easily as it currently flows within Member States, so as to increase sustainability potential and real competition as well as to drive economic efficiency of the energy system. To this end, FARCROSS aims to address this challenge by connecting major stakeholders of the energy value chain and demonstrating integrated hardware and software solutions that will facilitate the “unlocking” of the resources for the cross-border electricity flows and regional cooperation. The project will promote state-of-the-art technologies to enhance the exploitation/capacity/efficiency of transmission grid assets, either on the generation or the transmission level. The hardware and software solutions will increase grid observability to facilitate system operations at a regional level, exploit the full potential of transmission corridors for increased electricity flows that will facilitate transition to flow-based regional market coupling, consider cross-border connections and their specific ICT and grid infrastructure, planning to use a wide-area protection approach to ensure the safe integration of renewable energy sources into the grid, mitigate disturbances, increase power system stability. An innovative regional forecasting platform will be demonstrated for improved prognosis of renewable generation and demand response and a capacity reserves optimization tool will be tested to maximize cross-border flows. The non-harmonization of national regulation will be studied and measures will be recommended to avoid distortion of the technology benefits.

While the electrical grid is moving from being a fully centralized to a highly decentralized system, grid operators have to change their operative business to accommodate for faster reactions and adaptive exploitation of flexibility. The topic has been subject of several research projects in the past years and reached a maturity that allows now the consideration of a final level, proposing an integrated view on the grid operations beyond the traditional barriers. OneNet aims at performing this critical step creating the conditions for a new generation of grid services able to fully exploit demand response, storage and distributed generation while creating fair, transparent and open conditions for the consumer. As result, while creating one network of Europe, the project aims to build a customer centric approach to grid operation. This ambitious view is achieved by proposing new markets, products and services and by creating a unique IT architecture. While a single platform for Europe is not thinkable, OneNet proposes innovative mechanisms of platform federation which are the key technical enablers for the proposed vision. The project has also very ambitious exploitation goals aiming at creating consensus on the solution far beyond the limits of the consortium partners thanks to a variety of actions including a large-scale forum for discussion within the international energy community. The complete concept is also proven in 4 cluster demos creating an involvement of an unprecedented number of countries and their grid operators in a single project. The consortium, in addition to a significant list of grid operators, includes also key IT players, leading research institutions and the two most relevant associations for grid operators, jointly providing a unique set of expertise in support to these challenging tasks.