Norway’s BKK Nett to advance power grid digital twin

Norwegian distributions system operator (DSO) BKK Nett is to further develop and test the new Kognitwin Grid digital twin.

The six-month R&D project will further investigate how a digital twin can be used to optimise the operations of power grids as electrification increases across other sectors such as transportation.

The initiative is the second for the newly released Kognitwin Grid digital twin and follows a similar arrangement with another Norwegian DSO Tensio.

Both companies were involved in the development of the digital twin in the KogniGrid project, which was launched in 2018. Other partners were the TSO Statnett, Microsoft and the SINTEF research organisation.

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Eivind Flatlandsmo, Project manager R&D in BKK Nett, says that they have learned a lot during the years the project has been running.

“One of our strategic goals is to become more data-driven in the decision-making processes for development, management and operation of the power grid. This requires large amounts of data and information from various sources, which in turn requires new tools and methods to generate the insight we need,” he says.

“We now know more about what a digital twin is, the work required to create a twin of value, and the potential the twin enables. The project has also given us a picture of our digital maturity level, the capacity for development and implementation of new solutions.”

The Kognitwin Grid digital twin is based on Kongsberg Digital’s proprietary digital platform Kognifai and is offered as a SaaS to provide insights and forecasts to identify grid bottlenecks, simulate grid scenarios and optimise grid investments.

The focus has been to give operators the ability to foresee challenges to the grid infrastructure, automate alerts and complex processes, to ensure complete control and pave the way for the digitalized energy system of the future.