Europe’s transmission R&D priorities – grid development, asset management and system operations

The European TSO association ENTSO-E has set out thirteen project concepts for the operators for R&D in the next five years.

As the region looks towards net zero emissions and operators expect to run their systems with 100% renewable generation, new and emerging technologies are set to be key to managing the many complexities that are anticipated as the number of connected resources grows.

In preparation, a considerable R&D effort is needed to gain understanding and advance the use of these technologies towards large scale implementation.

As part of its ongoing R&D activities, ENTSO-E has now set out thirteen project concepts, each focusing on a specific transmission system challenge, that the region’s TSOs will collaborate on in the five years to 2025.

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The concepts are centred on six ‘flagship areas’ previously determined to give a “milestone approach” to the key challenges of the coming decade. The project concepts mostly focus on advancing system solutions from initial concepts and the first small-scale pilots towards tools, methodologies, standards and investment options that can be demonstrated in the TSO operational environment.

Flagship 1 aims to optimise cross-sector integration, with the need to integrate all energy carriers in an effective manner. Four project concepts in this area cover the mass smart charging of electric vehicles, the development of innovative models and tools for coordinated multi-sector operation and planning, the design of a pan-European cross-sector data model and provision of market architecture for the cross-sector integration.

Flagship 2 aims to develop an ecosystem for deep electrification of final demand. This raises the importance of handling distributed flexibility, ensuring proper system planning and setting up new market mechanisms. The project concept is to integrate the coordinated flexibility potential to the future energy system of systems by harmonising flexibility assessments and demonstrating how market viability and energy system security can go hand-in-hand in a coordinated approach for a P2X plant.

Flagship 3 aims to enhance grid use and development for the pan-European market. With a focus on new approaches to grid design and asset management, two project concepts are focused on eco-design processes for alternatives to the sulphur hexafluoride greenhouse gas in high voltage equipment and on lowering the carbon footprint of TSOs via lifecycle assessments embedded in smarter asset management processes.

Flagship 4 aims to enable large-scale integration of offshore wind to the grid, with the Green Deal targeting 100GW by 2030 and several hundreds more by 2050. The main gaps in this area are consolidated in two project concepts focusing specifically on interoperability, with one to develop an interoperability framework and a follow-up to demonstrate this in practice with a full-scale multi-vendor, multi-terminal high voltage direct current (HVDC) system.

Flagship 5 aims to enable secure operation of widespread hybrid AC/DC grids. The main needs are concerned with modelling such systems in planning and managing them in operations. Project concepts to address these are on stability management of a power electronics dominated system and assessment models for interactions, controllability and protection schemes.

Flagship 6 aims to enhance control centre operations and interoperability. With cyber resilience a keen concern with the increased digitalisation, the project concepts are on cyber resilience schemes focused on control centres and open IT solutions to ensure TSOs can take an agile, cost-effective and secure modular approach in extending control centre platforms and applications.

ENTSO-E estimates that the concepts require a budget in the range of €126 million to €146 million with most having the potential to obtain EU support.

At least half of the projects need to be underway during 2022 to meet the 2025 timeline.