Integrid - Bridging the Gap

44 Power Plant, and Power on Advantage from GE, with tools developed in a research environment such as the INESC-TEC Low Voltage Control, Medium Voltage Load Allocator, Forecast or HEMS or AIT’s Traffic Light System. It is also important to maximize the flexibility value of all DSO assets, from transformers at a substation level, to public lighting circuits and DSO storage assets will increase the capability to solve problems with predictive systems supported by state- of-the-art forecast technologies. At the centre of all this infrastructure is the InteGrid hub, Grid andMarket Hub, enabling connection between all actors allowing the data to flow between active stakeholders. Project results show that a fully operational infrastructure is a mandatory condition to enable flexibility activation plans that help all the value chain stakeholders, mainly by preventing problems and increasing the quality of service supported by value creation. To conclude, the role of customers at all the different levels of the value chain is by far the most important, and is the key to the success of every proactive flexible approach to the energy distribution system. Therefore, strategies to engage these customers are especially important. Slovenian demonstrator The main objective of the Slovenian demo was to integrate existing DSO systems such as AMI, demand response with flexible active power, local smaller capacity energy storage, charging stations for electric vehicles, and the VPP into an holistic system. The established system has resulted in a power network which employs user friendly exploitation of flexible power, both for market-based services purposes and the respective distribution operator. The demonstration site consists of two geographically different areas. The first site is represented by a business building, with the following main equipment (building blocks): • Small-scale, LV energy storage, to store (e.g. during the night, low tariff) electrical energy for subsequent discharge (price arbitrage). • LV AC-Charging stations for EV with their own management system, to decrease the charging power to half during recharging at times of higher load on the building or at the request of the VPP. • Installed smart meters, which provide the necessary data to the system’s tools. Meters collect the data of active and reactive power and voltage for all controllable loads (chiller). The unique solution provided by InteGrid is that the VPP is the tool which triggers the business building loads to provide the requested flexibility. Even when managing EVCS, the VPP sends an information signal to the CS Management System and because both systems are integrated, the CS management system responds to the request with an appropriate change to recharging power. The concept of the second demo site is based on a larger scale and employs grid users as flexibility providers and InteGrid’s smart grid assets and tools with the following functions: • grid users connected to MV play the main role of flexible DER and are joined (operated) by the VPP platform. • Installed smart meters and remote terminal units (RTU) collect active power measurements from MV/LV substations and grid users which have flexibility. • Finally, the smart grid tools need the information on current grid topology changes to operate, and this is provided by the SCADA system. The grid area for the Slovenian large-scale demo was selected based on two criteria: a) an area with the highest coverage of smart meters due to metering data provision requirements; b) an area with the highest number of customers with potential active power flexibility. Two main HV/MV substations were involved in the selected demo area and supply 345 MV/LV transformer stations with electricity. Actively involved in the demonstration were 11 grid users, as together they provide more than 5.5 MW of flexible power. Some users provided positive flexibility by decreasing their power (turning off their loads), some, such as RES (CHP, facility with emergency diesel genset, small hydro power plants) were able to provide negative flexibility by decreasing their generated power. To provide the necessary measurements to the VPP, ten smart meters and five RTUs were installed.