Tech Talk | How innovative grid technologies can support Europe’s network expansion

Innovative grid technologies – aka grid enhancing technologies (GETs) in the US – provide the opportunity to support the required network buildout in Europe.

In a new study the industry organisation CurrENT, which has previously highlighted the potential of these technologies, estimates that their fast deployment could deliver between 20% to 40% capacity improvement of the overall network – between 100GW and 200GW – and thereby make a significant contribution to its reinforcement and expansion.

It is now well understood that globally the current networks need to approach a doubling in length by 2040 to integrate the increasing penetration of renewable energies and electrification across sectors.

In Europe, this means in practical terms integrating 2,000GW of renewables in 2040, up from 400GW today.

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To achieve this Europe’s transmission grids might need to be expanded by up to 50% to a total length of 0.6-0.8 million km and the distribution grids by up to 65% to a total length of 12.4-17 million km.

The current size of the EU grid is 0.5 million km at the transmission level and 10.3 million km at the distribution level.

To deliver this, the required buildout, in recent years annually approximately 500km at the transmission level and 80,000km at the distribution level, needs to happen between three to 20 times faster, which could put the delivery capacity of the TSOs and DSOs and the related supply chains under strain.

Technology benefits

This is where the innovative grid technologies (hereafter we adopt the US abbreviation GETs) come in, with each of the technologies able to contribute to reducing this strain, as well as to accelerating the grid expansion and lowering the overall investment requirements.

Based on real-world case studies, the estimated impacts of the technologies are:

• Advanced power flow control – 5% increase in overall network capacity.
• Advanced conductors – 100% increase in the capacity of a line.
• Storage as a transmission asset – 40% increase in the capacity of a line.
• Dynamic line rating – 30% increase in the capacity of a line.
• Grid inertia measurement – reduced renewables curtailment thanks to 30% higher assumed inertia.
• High temperature superconductors – 400%-1000% in the capacity of a line.

Together these are estimated as able to deliver the 20%-40% capacity improvement to the overall network, the report states.

The second benefit is that these technologies, in combination with conventional grid expansion, would support adding the required capacity faster.

Considering a 10% to 20% increase in the capacity of the existing grid assets achieved by 2030 and considering that similar improvements are applied to all new grid assets built in the future, then the transmission grids expansion can be accelerated by 5 to 8 years and the distribution grids expansion accelerated by 4 to 7 years, CurrENT finds.

Then the third is a reduction in the required investments, estimated at around €1 trillion (US$1.1 trillion) in each of the transmission and distribution grids, with gross savings of about €700 billion for a 35% reduction in the need for network buildout.

This figure doesn’t take into account the costs of the GETs themselves but CurrENT quotes the US DOE’s experience that the technologies can achieve an increase in capacity at a lower cost than conventional reinforcements.

Barriers and incentives

With all these benefits, why are these technologies not being widely deployed? Similarly to the US, there are several barriers that are hindering them, CurrENT notes.

For example, there is a lack of incentives to opt for non-capex intensive solutions and insufficient output incentives and incentives for innovation.

Another is that the investment doctrine of TSOs/DSOs might include bias towards predetermined solutions to fix the issues identified, rather than adopting a technology-neutral approach to answer system needs.

There also are long processes for network companies to trial and then adopt new innovative solutions and some of the potentially available funding schemes cannot easily be accessed by GETs due to eligibility issue.

However, regulatory solutions exist to remove these barriers and have already been implemented in some European countries, CurrENT points out.

For example, in Britain there is a totex regulation and there is the possibility of a rising opex benchmark for network operators.

In Italy, an incentive has been introduced to increase cross-zonal capacity and there is a decoupling of remuneration from capex.

In conclusion CurrENT points in the report, Prospects for innovative power grid technologies, which was produced with Compass Lexecon and Breakthrough Energy, to an update of regulatory incentives as potentially fostering the rollout of GETs and providing major benefits to the system.

“Network companies could have the freedom to find the most efficient solutions and be rewarded for it.

“Regulators could see results more quickly, and network challenges and bottlenecks addressed more quickly. Encouraging results like lower constraint costs and reduced bottlenecks to network deployment could soon follow.”

Jonathan Spencer Jones

Specialist writer
Smart Energy International

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