The EUniversal project, funded by the European Union, aims to develop a universal approach on the use of flexibility by Distribution System Operators (DSO) and their interaction with the new flexibility markets, enabled through the development of the concept of the Universal Market Enabling Interface (UMEI) – a unique approach to foster interoperability across Europe.
The UMEI represents an innovative, agnostic, adaptable, modular and evolutionary approach that will be the basis for the development of new innovative services, market solutions and, above all, implementing the real mechanisms for active consumer, prosumer, and energy community’s participation in the energy transition.
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NODES is a proud partner and is involved in all 3 demonstrations:
Portugal (EDP Distribuição):
Currently, apart from High (HV) and Medium Voltage (MV) levels, the Smart Grid infrastructure in mainland Portugal is comprised of more than 2 million smart meters ready to interface home energy management systems, and over 15 thousand smart secondary substations.
Portuguese DEMO will set, test and assess the potentiality of the innovative approach to the standard and optimized interconnectivity between grid operators and the different electricity market players.
This will be done in four DEMO-sites which include residential ecosystem with several technologies, industrial consumers in locations with substantial penetration of decentralized generation, agriculture irrigation systems, EDP’s Electric Vehicle (EV) fleet charging stations, and MV and LV networks equipped with storage assets.
Besides connecting to two market platforms, EDP Distribuição smart grid will also interact with third-party solutions for the provision of flexibility services from the agriculture sector, residential and industrial, customers and the EV charging operator.
The Portuguese DEMO-sites complement each other not only in the scope of the tools and services to be tested, such as smart grid functionalities, congestion management, resiliency, demand side response, flexibility mapping, amongst others, but also by providing an effective mean to demonstrate the universality of the UMEI concept.
Germany (Innogy / Mitnetz):
The German demonstrator aims to use the flexibilities connected to the low-voltage grid for congestion management and voltage regulation. For this purpose, flexibilities are provided via an aggregator and offered on a market platform to make use of flexible resources. The aggregator supports customers in making their flexibility solutions available by virtually combining the individual units.
The system operator can then fall back on these capacities in the event of predicted grid congestion. Basis for the correct selection and integration of flexibility solutions are the UMEI standard and grid tools which are developed in the EUniversal project. In supplement, remaining flexibilities in the low-voltage grid are aggregated in the local substation in order to be able to eliminate congestions in the upstream medium-voltage grid as well.
Poland (Energa):
The German demonstrator aims to use the flexibilities connected to the low-voltage grid for congestion management and voltage regulation. For this purpose, flexibilities are provided via an aggregator and offered on a market platform to make use of flexible resources. The aggregator supports customers in making their flexibility solutions available by virtually combining the individual units.
The system operator can then fall back on these capacities in the event of predicted grid congestion. Basis for the correct selection and integration of flexibility solutions are the UMEI standard and grid tools which are developed in the EUniversal project. In supplement, remaining flexibilities in the low-voltage grid are aggregated in the local substation in order to be able to eliminate congestions in the upstream medium-voltage grid as well
For more information please follow EUniversal on the project webside, LinkedIn or twitter.
