Innovation grant for the development of a stable pan-European grid

28-12-2011 Together with a number of TSOs and universities involved, TenneT will work out a program to warrant European grid security in the future. To this end, the European Commission has made an innovation grant of 3 million euro available for further development. The program is aimed at integrating the growing share of sustainable electricity into the grid and at managing the increasing cross-border electricity flows.

The growing share of electricity generated from intermittent renewable energy sources as well as increasing market-based cross-border flows and related physical flows are leading to rising uncertainties in transmission network operation. In the central-European synchronous area, the difference between actual physical flows and market exchanges can be very substantial due to large installations of renewable energy generation, such as wind and solar plants.

Over the coming years, TenneT is seeking to manage power flows within the capacity of existing networks by deploying available operational measures and subsequently communicating the resulting available transfer capacity to market participants. At the same time, an efficient and sustainable electricity system requires efficient deployment of existing and future transmission capacities in order to maximize transportation possibilities. Notably, new interconnections and an increasing number of transmission devices allowing for load flow control will be integrated into future transmission networks and will offer new possibilities in network operation.

As a result, further development of common grid security tools is one of the major challenges European TSOs will face in the mid-term. The methods to be applied will have to take into account all technological measures to enhance flexibility of power system operations. Additionally, the framework is to be used to assess the influence of different operational and market rules on system security.

The zone structure of the European energy market, along with the legal responsibilities of TSOs for different system areas, will continue to pose increasingly complex requirements to the system operators concerning the quality and accuracy of cooperation. The system security research and demonstration project outlined is designed for coping with these challenging issues and preconditions. The toolkit to be developed will enable TSOs to also ensure secure grid operation in future electricity networks with high penetration of intermittent renewables. It will enable TSOs to act in a coordinated European target system where regional strategies converge to ensure the best possible deployment of the European electricity infrastructure.

TenneT is the power hub in the European grid. In Germany, TenneT is currently constructing offshore wind energy connections with a total capacity of 5,000 megawatt, equivalent to the electricity consumption of 5 million households. In addition, TenneT will be reinforcing the Dutch and German high-voltage grids by installing around 1,000 kilometres of new interconnections over the coming years.