The ongoing transformation of the European energy sector is crucial to reduce CO2 emissions and increase security of supply and independence from energy imports. A pillar of this transformation is increased power generation from renewable resources, especially wind power and photovoltaics, but also electrification of the heating and mobility sector. These generators and consumers of electrical energy are increasingly connected to the power grid via power electronic converters. Furthermore, DC lines and subnetworks are built to reduce power conversion losses and achieve cost-efficient network strengthening. Due to these trends, power systems are increasingly hybrid AC/DC systems, and their dynamic is highly influenced by power electronic devices. Maintaining system stability and situation awareness in such hybrid systems is a challenge for system operators on distribution and transmission level and creates a need for SCADA systems that are adaptable and help operators to tackle the challenges posed by the rapid transformation of the grids. InterSCADA is committed to developing and providing an open-source, vendor-independent SCADA system for operators. This will enable them to quickly adapt to sudden system perturbations, implement new monitoring and control functions, and maintain situational awareness. The InterSCADA platform will implement a set of relevant functions as microservices, creating a modular SCADA system for system operators. The InterSCADA solutions will be deployed and tested in demonstration sites in four different countries, involving both distribution and transmission system operators. Furthermore, InterSCADA will provide recommendations to grid codes and standards for hybrid AC/DC systems, aiming to facilitate the transformation of the power grid while ensuring the maintenance of stability and reliability.

Six TSOs, eleven research partners, together with sixteen industry (manufacturers, solution providers) and market (producers, ESCo) players address, through a holistic approach, the identification and development of flexibilities required to enable the Energy Transition to high share of renewables. This approach captures synergies across needs and sources of flexibilities, such as multiple services from one source, or hybridizing sources, thus resulting in a cost-efficient power system. OSMOSE proposes four TSO-led demonstrations (RTE, REE, TERNA and ELES) aiming at increasing the techno-economic potential of a wide range of flexibility solutions and covering several applications, i.e.: synchronisation of large power systems by multiservice hybrid storage; multiple services provided by the coordinated control of different storage and FACTS devices; multiple services provided by grid devices, large demand-response and RES generation coordinated in a smart management system; cross-border sharing of flexibility sources through a near real-time cross-border energy market. The demonstrations are coordinated with and supported by simulation-based studies which aim (i) to forecast the economically optimal mix of flexibility solutions in long-term energy scenarios (2030 and 2050) and (ii) to build recommendations for improvements of the existing market mechanisms and regulatory frameworks, thus enabling the reliable and sustainable development of flexibility assets by market players in coordination with regulated players. Interoperability and improved TSO/DSO interactions are addressed so as to ease the scaling up and replication of the flexibility solutions. A database is built for the sharing of real-life techno-economic performances of electrochemical storage devices. Activities are planned to prepare a strategy for the exploitation and dissemination of the project’s results, with specific messages for each category of stakeholders of the electricity system.

By 2020, several areas of the HVAC pan-European transmission system will be operated with extremely high penetrations of Power Electronics(PE)-interfaced generators, thus becoming the only generating units for some periods of the day or of the year – due to renewable (wind, solar) electricity. This will result in i) growing dynamic stability issues for the power system (possibly a new major barrier against future renewable penetration), ii) the necessity to upgrade existing protection schemes and iii) measures to mitigate the resulting degradation of power quality due to harmonics propagation. European TSOs from Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and UK have joined to address such challenges with manufacturers (Alstom, Enercon, Schneider Electric) and universities/research centres. They propose innovative solutions to progressively adjust the HVAC system operations. Firstly, a replicable methodology is developed for appraising the distance of any EU 28 control zone to instability due to PE proliferation and for monitoring it in real time, along with a portfolio of incremental improvements of existing technologies (the tuning of controllers, a pilot test of wide-area control techniques and the upgrading of protection devices with impacts on the present grid codes). Next, innovative power system control laws are designed to cope with the lack of synchronous machines. Numerical simulations and laboratory tests deliver promising control solutions together with recommendations for new PE grid connection rules and the development of a novel protection technology and mitigation of the foreseen power quality disturbances. Technology and economic impacts of such innovations are quantified together with barriers to be overcome in order to recommend future deployment scenarios. Dissemination activities support the deployment schemes of the project outputs based on knowledge sharing among targeted stakeholders at EC level.