Soteria
: Centrica Business Solutions Belgium, Elia, Fluvius, N-side, and Thermovault.
: €155.826
: €64.471
Soteria is a collaboration between Centrica Business Solutions Belgium, Elia, Fluvius, N-Side, and Thermovault, under the Internet of Energy Initiative (IO.E) umbrella. The group aimed to design and test an FSP/DSO/TSO coordination and data exchange mechanism, based on IO.E. Additionally, the solution would optimally unlock the available capacity on existing LV networks for FSPs, so that they can offer residential flexibility to TSOs in a network-safe way. Thus, FSPs get more freedom to include residential customers in their flexibility pools, who in turn can earn a little bit of money, and can make their (potentially cheap) residential flex available to society without the risk of developing local network congestion.
Results
Soteria created two key results: first, an interface specification that describes, step by step, the required interactions between the FSPs, DSOs, and TSOs. Second, a subset of this design was fully implemented at two physical locations in the field: measurement data from DSO substations combined with FSP measuring data were translated into available bandwidth on the local network in near-real time. FSPs made location-conscious bids and were allocated a portion of the local network bandwidth based on a market optimization algorithm. This resulted in FCR or aFRR-like activations with residential boilers based on the results of day-ahead (FCR) and 15-minute (aFRR) operating cycles of the Soteria process.
During our tests, the FSP was able to activate 27 boilers at the same location completely without congestion risk. Further tests showed that, for some types of feeders, more network capacity could be unlocked on a single feeder than is currently permitted on an area equal to 6 football fields.
Impact
The research shows that the coordination of the process itself, made possible by IO.E, is technically feasible and scalable. Nevertheless, there are also various challenges to be overcome and work to be done to scale Soteria. This is more about producing or processing the data in the Soteria process rather than the data exchange itself. Notable obstacles include 1) the availability of LV measurements and possibly even basic data to calculate “bandwidths” on the granularity proposed for Soteria and 2) the integration of these steps into existing market designs and timetables which are often organized at national or even EU level. This means that Soteria’s principles need to be integrated into market systems where many stakeholders have a role to play.
As such, Soteria has drawn up an extensive corpus of work outlining many potential fundamental principles to enable the long-term integration of network-safe flexibility into our electricity grid. Soteria’s work clearly shows that an underlying communication platform like IO.E is indispensable to coordinate this type of process. However, this is not enough on its own. Instead, it will need to be complemented by building capacity with each individual stakeholder, step by step.
With an energy system on the brink of disruption, the Soteria team concludes its work and is even more convinced that the challenging path ahead of us must be taken by bringing together the long-term skills and perspectives of all stakeholders of the energy system.
