Advanced TSO control rooms to enhance grid observability, stability and resilience

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• Enhanced reliability, resilience, and efficiency of electricity transmission grids. Grid congestion is managed efficiently;
• Enhanced observability of grids and improved forecasting of supply, demand, grid capacity availability, and flexibility;
• Transmission system operators (TSO) leverage modern digital solutions and employ improved systems to effectively manage their grids and improve interoperability with other TSOs;
• Vendor-agnostic reference architectures, solutions and tools are developed to help advancing the TSO control room design and operation.

Scope:

Projects are expected to address all the following items:

• Design and test innovative solutions, technologies and processes for advancing the way the TSO control rooms are designed and operated, increasing observability and entailing enhanced support for the operators, providing more automation and enhanced support for decision, faster response times and less room for error. The solutions are expected to incorporate both hardware and software aspects;
• Analyse and include, as far as possible, solutions for Wide Area Monitoring Systems (WAMS) to extend the real-time monitoring and control capabilities over large areas, while coping with the decentralisation and increased complexity of the system;
• The novel solutions are expected to help the operators to manage better grid congestion and incorporate more renewables while reducing curtailment. The solutions will facilitate data-driven grid operations, capitalising on real-time analytics and data from smart assets. The solutions may include preparation, recovery and/or restoration from incidents (including extreme weather events);
• Help the grid operators to update their operational tools in light of the deep transformation of the grids, notably the distributed nature of generation. May include the option to de-centralise the control for increasing the resilience of decision-making;
• Advance forecasting solutions for energy supply, demand and flexibility made available to the system operator, need for ancillary services, as well as for grid hosting capacity; provide advanced analytics and visualisations;
• Develop interoperability between the control rooms of different TSOs (and using different vendor solutions) to secure seamless data exchanges and coordination. Develop interoperability between the TSO control rooms and other entities connected to the transmission grids, including the adjacent DSOs.
• Leverage modern solutions, notably digital twins and artificial intelligence. Use security-by-design and advanced protection mechanisms against cyber threats. Use and/or develop, to the greatest extent possible, open-source software solutions and or software modules;
• Develop a manual and propose best practices on this matter to be used by other TSOs (including operation instructions). Identify remaining gaps and further needs for research and development.

The demonstration, test and validation of the activities should be carried out in at least two pilots in different EU Member States or Associated Countries.

Projects are expected to include at least two electricity Transmission System Operators (TSOs) and at least two universities and/or research organisations.

Additionally, collaboration is encouraged with the following entities and projects:

• at least one supplier of technology and solutions for TSO control rooms;
• at least two distribution system operators, which manage grids that are connected to the grids operated by any of the TSOs that are partners in the project;
• (at least) one project funded under the separate call ‘Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADSM) for more efficient and flexible distribution grids’ with the view to strengthen TSO-DSO coordination and support interoperable solutions. To that end, the project proposals are expected to describe a credible mechanism to do so.

This collaboration (minimum number of entities) is sought per project in total and does not necessarily apply per each pilot in particular.

Selected projects are expected to contribute to the BRIDGE initiative^[1] and actively participate in its activities.

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[1] https://bridge-smart-grid-storage-systems-digital-projects.ec.europa.eu/