Prompted by the need to comply with environmental and societal concerns, Electrical Power and Energy Systems are undergoing an unprecedented transformation, demanding urgent upgrades to make them more reliable, resilient and secure. Modernization of current grids will greatly reduce the frequency and duration of power blackouts, diminish the impact of disruptive events and restore service faster when outages occur, creating broad benefits to society and economy. eFORT approach will enable the further upgrading of the energy grid without affecting the security of supply and increasing their reliability and resiliency against extreme weather events, man-made hazards and equipment failures. eFORT addresses this complex challenge by gathering a consortium of 24 partners, from 10 EU countries, that provides the needed expertise. The project will put in place a set of solutions at the cyber and physical layers for detecting, preventing and mitigating vulnerabilities and threats. Among them, an interoperable Intelligent Platform will set a common foundation for grid characterization and vulnerability overseeing, as well as gather information from smart grid components and apply heavy-duty algorithms, whereas Asset Management developments will strengthen grid infrastructure robustness, which will be empowered by the addressed Digital Technologies. All these elements will be validated in relevant environments coming from 4 demo cases covering the whole grid value chain: (i) a transmission network (The Netherlands); (ii) a remote distribution grid (Italy); (iii) a digital substation in Ukraine; and (iv) a micro-grid in Spain. Moreover, eFORT relies on several horizontal actions aiming at empowering EPES players by establishing a common regulatory and standardisation framework, performing technical and cost-benefit analysis, and evaluating new related business models and replication potential, in the pathway towards a more sustainable energy system.

The project SmartNet aims at providing architectures for optimized interaction between TSOs and DSOs in managing the exchange of information for monitoring and for the acquisition of ancillary services (reserve and balancing, voltage regulation, congestion management) both at national level and in a cross-border context. Local needs for ancillary services in distribution systems are supposed to co-exist with system needs for balancing and congestion management. Resources located in distribution systems, like demand side management and distributed generation, are supposed to participate to the provision of ancillary services both locally and for the system in the context of competitive ancillary services markets. Through an in-depth and a simulation in a lab-environment, answers are sought for to the following questions: • which ancillary services could be provided from distribution to the whole system (via transmission), • which optimized modalities could be adopted for managing the network at the TSO-DSO interface and what monitoring and control signals could be exchanged to carry out a coordinated action, • how the architectures of the real time markets (in particular the balancing markets) could be consequently revised, • what information has to be exchanged and how (ICT) for the coordination on the distribution-transmission border, starting from monitoring aspects, to guarantee observability and control of distributed generation, flexible demand and storage systems, • which implications could the above issues have on the on-going market coupling process, that is going to be extended to real time markets in the next years, according to the draft Network Code on Electricity Balancing by ENTSO-E. Different TSO-DSO interaction modalities are compared with reference to three selected national cases (Italian, Danish, Spanish) also supposing the possibility of a cross-border exchange of balancing services. Physical pilots are developed for the same national cases.

Future energy systems will be characterized by growing shares of intermittent power generation from Renewable Energy Sources (RES) while facing increasing diffusion of Electrical Vehicles (EVs). Such scenarios are creating new challenges for efficient management and grid stability. Energy Storage Systems (ESS) will provide a valuable solutions to such challenges. The Storage4Grid (S4G) vision is to provide utilities and end-users with new tools for optimal grid planning, use and evaluation of storage technologies. S4G pre-designs new storage control models and interfaces built upon existing standards and suitable to support scalable and cost-efficient coordination of heterogeneous ESS. S4G will deliver: (i) a Decision Support Framework allowing utilities to evaluate costs and benefits of existing and hypothetical storage installations, for various energy use patterns and regulatory landscapes; (ii) a Distributed Control methodology for ESS; (iii) an innovative Unbundled Smart Meter to enable ESS control in real-life settings; (iv) an Energy Router for provision of future grid services by ESS. S4G will consider 3 scenarios, each associated to a different test site. An advanced scenario for “Advanced Cooperative ESS” leveraging the Energy Router and DC buses will be developed and demonstrated in the MicroDERLab facilities in Bucharest (RO). A “ESS Coordination” scenario will focus ESS deployed for maximize self-consumption and RES exploitation at prosumer level. It will be developed and evaluated in a deployment in Fur (DK). The “Cooperative EV Charging” scenario will focus on use of storage to support large deployments of EV charging stations. It will be defined and validated in real-life settings in Bolzano (IT). The compatibility of S4G models with standards, regulatory landscapes and emerging technologies is ensured by participation of one storage provider and by the engagement of utilities and storage providers in the External Stakeholders Group (ESG).

The expected increasing share of variable RES is challenging the electric grid in terms of reliability, stability and security of supply. Indeed, the European renewable target for 2030 (32% of total energy consumed) means that more than 50% of electricity will be generated from RES, most of which will be connected to the MV and LV grids. As an answer to these present and incoming challenges, FLEXIGRID project proposes to improve the distribution grid operation making it more flexible, reliable and cost-efficient, through the development of 4 HW and 4 SW solutions. Furthermore, a single open source platform will integrate the different solutions making them interoperable with the IT systems used by the energy stakeholders, increasing its replication potential. With the aim of increasing the project’s replication potential, 8 use cases have been identified to address EU most common distribution grid problems. These use cases are represented by 4 complementary demo-sites ready to upgrade FLEXIGRID solutions towards TRL8: a rural and peri-urban network in Spain with a RES share of 39%; a resort in the Greek Island of Thasos able to integrate 10% of RES; an urban grid in the city of Zagreb with congested areas, and an isolated valley in the South-Tyrol region of Italy with more than 50% of hydroelectric energy. To reach the project objectives, the consortium counts with partners representing all the energy system value-chain. In this sense, 2 RTOs and 2 Universities will work together with 5 technology providers to develop the project solutions and deploy them in the four demo-sites, represented by 3 DSOs and 2 large companies. Finally, 2 associations will ensure the exploitation and dissemination of the project results along the EU energy community. Finally, FLEXIGRID will support the ‘Clean Energy for All’ Europeans package while actively cooperating with BRIDGE initiative thanks to the presence of the consortium in 10 of its projects