The present context shows the potential of electricity grids to lead the energy system transition as long as new solutions deal with the challenges related to flexibility solutions, grid observability and controllability, market mechanisms and interoperability in a holistic way. The new solutions need to cover the technological aspects by linking smart and integrated services and tools for distribution grid with market mechanisms. This architecture will guarantee a significant impact on the environment and society. The project consortium accepted this challenge and will develop “EUniversal Project” which will enable the transformation of the electricity grid by resolving existing limitations in the energy system through the introduction of a Universal Market Enabling Interface (UMEI). Through this concept, grids will become capable of accommodating all future scenarios through the active use of grid services, acting as an extensive toolbox of flexibility solutions and innovate market mechanisms. The primary goal of EUniversal is to enable the transformation of the energy system into a new multi-energy and multi-consumer concept guaranteeing a sustainable, secure and stable manner of electricity supply by bringing forward an universal, adaptable and modular approach through a Universal Market Enabling Interface (UMEI) to interlink active system management with electricity markets and the provision of flexibility services, taking also into consideration the activation needs and the coordination requirements with both commercial parties and TSOs. To do so, EUniversal will define, develop and validate a set of market-oriented flexibility management services from DER in a real environment, under a large RES integration and high electrification scenario. In order to demonstrate the services generated in the development phase of the project, 3 different DEMO sites (located in Portugal (PT), Germany (DE) and Poland (PL)) will be run to validate the project solutions

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.

The current high-speed deployment rate of non-programmable Renewable Energy Sources (RES) is making transmission network planning activities more and more complex and affected by a high level of uncertainty. Because network investments are capital intensive and the lifetime of the infrastructure spans several decades, it may happen that when a new line is commissioned it is no longer the best option and it might be partially regarded as a stranded cost. There is an on-going debate on the selection of the more effective technologies that could contribute to system flexibility. This category doesn’t only include grid technologies, but also storage elements and flexible demand, both located in transmission or provided by opportunely aggregated distributed energy sources located in distribution networks. FlexPlanning aims at creating a new tool for optimizing transmission and distribution grid planning, considering the placement of flexibility elements as an alternative to traditional grid planning. This approach aims at helping to reduce overall power system costs i.e. infrastructure deployment and operation costs, the latter in terms of procurement of energy and system services. FlexPlan is going to take into account environmental impact and footprint (impact on air quality for thermal generation, carbon footprint, impact on landscape of new T&D lines). A pre-processing tool is also created to determine location, size and associated costs for storage and flexible demand candidates. The new planning tool is first validated and then used for analysing six detailed regional scenarios at 2030-2040-2050 in order to assess the potential role of storage and flexible resources. Pan-European scenarios are preliminarily elaborated in order to provide border conditions for the regional cases. Regulatory conclusions are drawn to analyse whether opportune incentivisation procedures could be put in place by the regulators wherever some consistent advantages are demonstrated.

For the time being, there are no economically feasible steelmaking technologies available having the potential to meet the EU’s climate and energy targets for 2030. At best, a 15% decrease in the overall CO2 intensity of the sector could be achieved throughout the widespread dissemination of technologies that could reasonably become cost-effective in the future. Therefore, breakthrough technologies are urgent and indispensable. ΣIDERWIN project proposes to develop a breakthrough innovation compared to the actual steel production process bringing together steel making with electrochemical process. The electrolysis process using renewable energies will transform any iron oxide, including those inside the by-products from other metallurgies, into steel plate with a significant reduction of energy use. This process decomposes under mild conditions but at intense reaction rate naturally occurring iron oxides such as hematite into iron metal and oxygen gas. By offering a CO2-free steel production process, the project will contribute to the reduction of the total greenhouse gas emissions. Compared to traditional steelmaking plants, this innovative technology has several positive impacts such as: a reduction by 87% of the direct CO2 emissions; a reduction by 31% of the direct energy use; the ability to produce steel from by-products rich in iron oxides from non-ferrous metallurgy residues; an increased integration with renewable energies with a more flexible process. The project is led by ArcelorMittal the world’s leading steel and mining company. The company has been working for 12 years on the development of the technology to bring it from the TRL 0 to TRL 4 through the manufacturing of 5 different pilots, proving the potential of the technology. With this solid background, ArcelorMittal surrounded by 11 additional innovative European partners, aims at developing a 3 metre-long new experimental pilot to validate the technology at TRL 6.

BAMBOO aims at developing new technologies addressing energy and resource efficiency challenges in 4 intensive industries (steel, petrochemical, minerals and pulp and paper). BAMBOO will scale up promising technologies to be adapted, tested and validated under real production conditions focus on three main innovation pillars: waste heat recovery, electrical flexibility and waste streams valorisation. These technologies include industrial heat pumps, Organic Rankine Cycles, combustion monitoring and control devices, improved burners and hybrid processes using energy from different carriers (waste heat, steam and electricity) for upgrading solid biofuels. These activities will be supported by quantitative Life Cycle Assessments. In order to maximize their application and impact to plant level, flexibility measures will be implemented in each demo case towards energy neutrality and joined in a horizontal decision support system for flexibility management. This tool will analyse, digest and interchange information from both, the process parameters and the energy market, including the BAMBOO solutions. As a result, the operation of the plants will be improved in terms of energy and raw materials consumption, and will lay the foundation of new approaches in the energy market. BAMBOO will empower intensive industries to take better decisions to become more competitive in the use of natural resources in a broader context, in the spirit of facilitating the use of larger variability and quantity of RES. BAMBOO consortium comprises strong industrial participation; 6 large companies as final users and 3 SMEs as technology providers, working with experienced RTOs and supporting entities. The private investment associated to BAMBOO is over 7M€ along the execution of the project. Lastly, the transferability potential of BAMBOO is extremely relevant as targeted process and plant improvements offer very high potential applications in other intensive industries.