Europe’s DSO ‘technology radar’ updated

A year on from its first release, E.DSO has released the third edition of its ‘Technology radar’ for DSOs highlighting the expected impacts of emerging technologies.

While the need for a new edition is reflective of the pace of technological advancements, the new document doesn’t itself introduce any new technologies or change the expected impacts of the technologies on the DSOs.

Rather the updates are in the all important accompanying factsheets on the 33 technologies featured describing the technology, opportunities and challenges for DSOs, potential use cases and ongoing projects in which it is featured.

These include three new factsheets on‘Local Energy Optimisation in Electricity Grids’, ‘Smart Distribution Transformers’ and ‘Recycling and Circular Economy’, and an update of the ‘Digital Twins’ factsheet.

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‘Local energy optimisation in electricity grids’ encompasses all technologies on the low voltage network that help ensure the integration of energy is carried out with minimal impact on supply quality.

Highlights are the substantial growth of total PV energy capacity in Europe, with annual additions reaching record highs and the rapid expansion in the number of EV charging points expected to exceed 1.2 million by 2025.

The ‘Smart Distribution Transformers’ factsheet highlights the evolution of distribution transformers to solid state smart distribution transformers as being able to leverage on power electronics with multiple-stage AC/DC active rectifiers, DC/DC converters, DC/AC grid-tied inverters and storage as an option.

The ‘Recycling and Circular Economy’ factsheet highlights the EC’s circular economy action plan as one of the main building blocks of the Green Deal and the transition to a circular economy to reduce pressure on natural resources and create sustainable growth and jobs.

The ‘Digital Twins’ factsheet is expanded with new information that has emerged over the past year as their use has evolved.

Nine promising use cases are presented – grid optimisation, active system management, asset management, cyber-physical grid resilience and security, network planning, TSO-DSO coordination, training and education, disaster response and energy efficiency.

Ongoing projects that are listed are the TwinEU project, E.ON’s intelligent grid platform and various use cases under way by E-Redes and Enedis.

The ‘Technology radar‘ is prepared by a dedicated task force organised within E.DSO’s Technology & Knowledge Sharing Committee and is co-convened by Pierre Mallet and Anne-Laure Popelin from Enedis.