FutureFlow links interconnected control areas of four transmission system operators of Central-South Europe which today do face increasing challenges to ensure transmission system security: the growing share of renewable electricity units has reduced drastically the capabilities of conventional, fossil-fuel based means to ensure balancing activities and congestion relief through redispatching. Research and innovation activities are proposed to validate that consumers and distributed generators can be put in a position to provide balancing and redispatching services, within an attractive business environment.
The overarching goal of the present Research and Innovation Action is:
To design and pilot test comprehensive techno-economic models for open and non-discriminatory access of advanced consumers and distributed generators to a regional platform forancillary/balancing and redispatching services
The figure below illustrates the functional interactions between the prototype flexibility aggregation platforms and the prototype regional balancing and redispatching platform as the central point for the cross-border and other transmission system operators (TSO) oriented businesses. The field tests with real energy customers and distributed generation owners aim show the synergetic benefits from the collaboration of such commercial and industrial (C&I) consumers, prosumers and distributed generators in frequency restoration reserve markets combined with the cross-border integration of such markets. FutureFlow also intends to analyse the scalability and replicability potential at European level of the most promising tested use cases as designed for the four involved countries.
For TSOs:
> More competition in reserve markets
> Possible decrease in the total volume of reserves contracted
> More efficient congestion management
For aggregators:
> Increased attractiveness and/or profitability growth potential
For C&I consumers, prosumers and distributed generators:
> Increased profitability of turnover from their assets