TwinEU to create European electricity grid digital twin
TU Delft’s ‘control room of the future’ where the Dutch and French demonstrations will take place. Image: TU Delft
The TwinEU project has been launched to create a digital twin of the entire European electricity grid.
The project aims to leverage the competencies of grid and market operators, technology providers and research centres to create the concept of a pan-European digital twin based on the federation of local twins.
With this, it is proposed to enable a reliable, resilient, and safe operation of the infrastructure while facilitating new business models that will accelerate the deployment of renewable energy sources in Europe.
The concept of a digital twin for the European electricity grid was named in the European Commission’s grid digitalisation action plan and kicked off with a ‘declaration of intent’ by ENTSO-E and the DSO Entity in December 2022.
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Antonello Monti, professor and director of the Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems at RWTH Aachen University and group leader at Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, who is coordinating TwinEU, explains that it is an “innovation action”.
Thus it is distinct from, but obviously will closely align to and work closely with the ENTSO-E and DSO Entity led initiative.
The TwinEU project extending over three years has a total cost of €25.2 million ($27.4 million), of which €20 million is being contributed through the Horizon Europe scheme.
The consortium is believed to be one of the largest to date within the Horizon Europe framework, with 75 partners across the region, including ENTSO-E, E.DSO and grid operators from 15 countries.
The basis for the project is to start a process of agreement at the European level so as not to develop isolated instances but a federated ecosystem of digital twin solutions. As such each operator can make its own implementation decisions while preserving and supporting interoperability and data and model exchanges with the remaining ecosystem.
The envisioned digital twin with standard interfaces and open APIs is planned to build the kernel of European data exchange supported by interfaces to the energy data space, which is under development.
Solutions developed in TwinEU are planned to be demonstrated in eight pilots across 11 EU countries.
Areas of focus will include improved physical and cyber grid resilience, enhanced observability and controllability, advanced forecasting for optimized market actions and smart coordinated planning.
