Successful first review for the FARCROSS H2020 Innovation Action

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The first review of the FARCROSS H2020 Innovation Action research project with external reviewers and the Project Officer from the EC side took place on June 16, 2021, wherein the FARCROSS consortium successfully presented the results of the work of the project during the first 18 months of the project. The FARCROSS project aims to connect major stakeholders of the energy value chain and demonstrate 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.

UBITECH ENERGY research group, as the project’s technical coordinator, presented the project’s progress towards its technical and operational objectives, as well as a summary of the project’s achievements so far. The reviewers and the PO were impressed with the overall results of the project and provided some interesting feedback and recommendations for future work.

Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) framework for cross border innovation projects

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A Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) framework for cross border innovation projects regarding the electricity trading and smart grid technology will be conducted within WP9, to indicate how the FARCROSS concept and tools can provide significant value for the cross-border cooperation, smart grids and market coupling, achieving the targets for the Internal Energy Market.


 
The CBA plays an essential role within the FARCROSS project by:

  • Providing tangible KPIs to proportionate the pros-and-cons of “before” and “after” situations among the various countries involved in innovation projects.
  • Identifying and prescribing new business opportunities for energy stakeholders in cross-border electricity trading and smart grid technology provision.
  • Enhancing the efforts for regulatory harmonization by providing tangible proof of how beneficial cross-border smart grid and trading innovations are for the secure and clean energy future of the European electricity grid.
  • Enhancing the portfolio of solutions for the planning of cross-border infrastructure investments.

The broad perspective of the FARCROSS CBA will achieve to ‘channel’ local to cross-border benefits, facilitating the pathway to achieve EU targets regarding utilities, market designs, social benefits, business uptake of innovation and increased cross border cooperation.

FARCROSS project at T&D World

As Europe attempts to dramatically redesign the interconnected transmission system by employing dynamic line ratings, the ⚡FARCROSS project will employ technological innovations to bring forward the additional benefits gained by increasing interconnectivity between neighboring transmission systems that strongly align with the EU’s vision and policy.

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FARCROSS 2nd Press Release

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Scalability and Replicability Analysis (SRA) at EU level

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FARCROSS innovative solutions include not only state-of-the-art digital technologies installed on the power grid and communication infrastructure, such as power flow controllers, dynamic line rating sensing systems and wide-area monitoring systems (WAMS), but also advanced software solutions, including capacity allocation and reserve optimisation tools. These solutions are developed and demonstrated within eight European countries (Greece, Bulgaria, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania, Slovenia).

Nevertheless, the demonstration of these solutions in pilot projects does not guarantee that they can be replicated in another environment, under different boundary conditions and under increasing stress conditions. Therefore, it is fundamental to guarantee the scalability and replicability of the system and its functionalities prior to large scale implementation.

For that purpose, a complete scalability and replicability analysis (SRA) will be conducted within FARCROSS WP9, to define a detailed plan of recommendations for rolling out of the hardware, software, solutions, platforms, tools and processes and adopt the proposed innovations at EU level.

 

The technical innovations provided in FARCROSS will be weighed against specific scalability and replicability factors and the EU energy targets.

 

  • Replicability factors are Standardization, Interoperability, Network configuration (technical factors), Macroeconomics, Market design, Business model (economic factors), Regulation, Acceptance.
  • Scalability factors are Modularity, Technology evolution, Interface design, Software integration, Existing infrastructure (technical factors), Economy of scale, Profitability (economic factors), Regulation, Acceptance.

These factors affect 4 common areas of interest:

 

Figure 1: Scalability and Replicability analysis focus areas

The scalability and replicability studies will assess the technical (i.e. network functions, dimensional issues), economic (i.e. monetizable KPIs) and regulatory (i.e. utilities regime, market design, market coupling, ITC status) aspects on a local but mainly international dimension, in order to serve the cross-border cooperation of the European countries.

OneNet project kicks off

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OneNet aims at 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.

OneNet will address the growing needs of TSO‘s and DSO’s to have real-time insight into the operation of their networks to work in a closely coordinated way, while unlocking and enabling new flexibility markets in a fair and open way. In this concept, FARCROSS, is one of the projects that OneNet will review in order to identify significant scalable technologies and practices implemented on the field regarding the inter-TSO coordination and regional cross-border cooperation. The OneNet project Consortium consists of 72 partners including some of our FARCROSS partners and therefore the collaboration between the two projects is well ensured.

Installation of DLR sensors on the Hungarian transmission network

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n July 2020, DLR sensors were installed on the Hungarian and Slovak cross-border Göd-Leva 400 kV transmission line in the framework of the 5th work package (WP5).

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Pathway through the national regulations: removing barriers to innovations and cross-border cooperation

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Increased interconnectivity between neighboring systems is a critical enabler to successfully integrate large amounts of renewable generation and lowering energy costs for European consumers. Although several attempts have been made to improve market integration in Europe, there is still a considerable difference in wholesale prices and framework regulations between countries and regions. European wholesale electricity markets are still largely national markets and in South East Europe, for instance, the price differences are quite large.

FARCROSS addresses the above-mentioned issue aiming to provide solutions within WP3, which has the following objectives:

  • To ensure that the technologies developed in FARCROSS can be used by plant and system operators to operate successfully in modern power markets.
  • To ensure that the technologies can make a significant contribution to European renewable energy objectives and policies.
  • To provide an implementable framework that will help operators and producers to access ancillary services revenue streams.

For that purpose, within WP3 of FARCROSS a study of applicable international, European and national law/ regulation framework will be performed to identify relevant regulatory aspects that need to be taken into account regarding the operational framework for the cross-border cooperation and the deployment of technologies that will allow electricity to flow seamlessly between European countries.

WP3 will act as a “vehicle” to channel the FARCROSS innovations into the pan-European energy landscape by:

  • Highlighting the current regulatory challenges for cross-border cooperation and non-harmonization features.
  • Identifying the barriers to innovation.
  • Proposing guidelines to avoid distortion resulting from these issues.

In September 2020, the first deliverable of WP3 D3.1 was submitted, exploring the structure of the wholesale energy market and its evolution, the existed regulations in the energy sector including the network codes (CACM,DCC,JVDC,RFG,ER), the role of the security coordination centers, the cross border trading and intercoupling with neighbouring countries activities, the ancillary services market, RES electricity generation and battery storage schemes, as well as the Green Deal objectives.

More specifically, in D3.1 the current status of each demo country was thoroughly analyzed regarding their:

  • Regulatory environment and innovation
  • Smart Grids
  • Energy efficiency
  • Upcoming targets for innovation
  • Ancillary services
  • Interconnections
  • RES Overview
  • RES promotion schemes
  • RES policies and procedures

Installation of sensors at APG line

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We are happy to announce the installation of three sensors at APG line.

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