Tools and technologies for coordination and integration of the European energy system

Specific Challenge

The increasing share of variable renewable energy sources and the 2020 and 2030 targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emission in the EU are calling for important changes in our energy system: more flexibility, more active involvement of all stakeholders and more collaboration. If no actions are taken, the power system will face several risks such as, poor quality of the electricity supply, congestion, lack of stability, excessive levels or curtailments, impossibility to cope with electro mobility demand, etc. The challenge is therefore to create and deploy common tools for planning, integration and operation across the energy system and its actors.

Scope

Proposals must target the development of technologies, tools and systems in one or several of the following areas:

• Novel European grid and end-to-end energy system planning tools, including foreseeable features such as storage, aggregation, demand-response and integrating cost aspects;
• Enhanced TSO / DSO collaboration and coordination tools, secure data exchange across networks along whole the value chain, ICT tools for cross-border trading for nearly real-time balancing; definition of minimum set of specifications to allow automated digital cross-border electricity market;
• Solutions for the deployment of neutral data access points ensuring a fair and transparent data access to all energy actors (TSOs, DSOs, ESCOs, Telcos, ICT companies, consumers, etc.); validation of new business models resulting from the cooperation between them; investigation of incentives and possible commercial arrangements with a fair share of benefits across actors;
• Synergies between electricity, gas and heat networks, associated business and market mechanisms and analysis of existing regulatory aspects; technologies for hydrogen production and storage are addressed in the frame of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen JU and are therefore excluded from this call;
• Socio-economic aspects and environmental aspects related to large scale infrastructures relevant to renewable generation and changes to transmission infrastructure need for their integration; socioeconomic aspects of consumer behaviours in demand-response mechanisms, consumer engagement.

Proposals will demonstrate a good knowledge and compatibility with current regulations, available or emerging standards and interoperability issues applying to their technologies, in particular in connection to ongoing work in the Smart Grid Task Force and its Experts Groups in the field of Standardization (e.g. CEN-CLC-ETSI M/490), regulatory environment for privacy, data protection, cyber security, smart grid deployment, infrastructure and industrial policy.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 2 and 4 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately and between EUR 0.5 and 1 million for proposals addressing area 5 only. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

In order to ensure the coverage of each area, proposals above all thresholds will be ranked in each of the 5 areas and the first ranked proposals in each area will be selected until the available budget is exhausted (first, all proposals ranked nb 1, then nb 2, etc.); in case of insufficient budget to select all projects of the same rank to cover the 5 areas, the best scores will prevail; in case of equal scores, standard rules do apply.

Expected Impact

Proposals must demonstrate that they are relevant, compatible with the broad EU energy policy context such as Climate-Energy packages, Energy Union. Where relevant, they should also indicate if and how they will contribute to:

• ongoing policy developments in the field of the design of the internal electricity market, of the retail market, ongoing discussions on self-consumption,
• enhanced interconnections between Member States and/or between energy networks.

Proposals must demonstrate if and how they contribute to the following impacts.

• Optimized grid planning and design at European level, maximizing the capacity of the grid to host variable renewables, take full advantages of a pan-European grid for stability and security
• Safe, secure, efficient and coherent data handling, enabling more cross border trading and real time balancing
• Enabling new flexibility services to the grid associated with new business opportunities, offering the access to cheaper energy for the consumers and maximising the social welfare
• Increasing the potential of exchanges between energy networks, enhanced security of supply, create business opportunities, avoidance of curtailment, offering new services to the grid
• Account for human behaviour in the design of infrastructure and demand-response to avoid blockages due to social acceptance, placing the consumer at the center of the energy system.

Finally, proposals will also include ad-hoc indicators to measure the progress against specific objectives of their choice which could be used to assess the progress during the project life.