Realisegrid

The European electricity system is facing major challenges to implement
a strategy for a reliable, competitive and sustainable electricity
supply. The development and the renewal of the transmission
infrastructure are central and recognised issues in this strategy.
Indeed, the transmission system is a complex and strongly interconnected
infrastructure that offers a wide range of benefits like reliability
improvement, promotion of competitive electricity markets and of
economic growth, support for development of new generation and for
exploitation of renewable resources.

The goal

The mission of Realisegrid, a project within the EU 7th Framework
Programme, is to develop a set of criteria, metrics, methods and tools
to assess how the transmission infrastructure should be optimally
developed to support the achievement of a reliable, competitive and
sustainable electricity supply in the European Union (EU). The project
moves along three axes:

• identification of performances and costs of new technologies
  aimed at increasing capacity, reliability and flexibility of the
  transmission infrastructure and preparation of a roadmap for the
  incorporation of new transmission technologies into the electricity
  networks;
• definition of long term scenarios for the EU power sector,
  characterized by different evolutions of demand and supply, with the
  goal to assess the impact on future electricity exchanges among European
  countries;
• implementation of a framework to facilitate harmonisation of
  pan-European approaches to electricity infrastructure evolution and to
  evaluate the overall benefits of transmission expansion investments.
  This cost-benefit analysis framework will be applied to test specific
  transmission projects listed in the EC "Priority interconnection plan".   

The numbers
The project Realisegrid encompasses thirty months of activities, carried out
by twenty partners from nine countries. The total budget is more than 4.2
million Euro. The consortium features the presence of four major
European transmission system operators, an important manifacturer of
transmission hardware and several international research centers and
universities.

For more information, visit www.realisegrid.erse-web.it.