FlexiGrid had the opportunity to present the project and collaboration with the Canadian smart grid project NESTNet to ISGAN, the International Smart Grid Action Network. Anh Tuan Le, Senior Lecturer at Chalmers University of Technology represented FlexiGrid at the meeting.
Anh Tuan Le, Chalmers University of Technology
Hi Anh Tuan, what do you think was of most interest or value to ISGAN from what you presented?
Our presentation at ISGAN workshop informed the communities about planed technical and market solutions in FlexiGrid to enable flexibilities from the distribution grids to support the DSOs in managing their electrical networks in the future. This is very well in line with the topic of the workshop as well as the main objective of ISGAN Annex6. Additionally, we have also informed about the collaboration between FLexiGrid and NESTNet which will increase the synergies and impacts from both projects.
The theme of the workshop was Capturing flexibility in local energy systems. How crucial and complex is this issue for an energy system based on 100% renewable energy to work?
For the system with 100% renewable energy to work, the system needs to be very flexible in order to adapt to the changes and uncertainties caused by variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. One of the important sources of flexibilities comes from the local energy systems. It is very crucial that the flexibilities can be made available and utilized directly at a local level at the DSOs networks where the problems arise. This issue can be quite complex as you can see there are a lot of proposed solutions to “capturing” flexibilities as presented in the workshop. In FlexiGrid, to enable flexibilities from the distribution networks, we will develop and demonstrate technologies and flexible markets enabled by IoT platforms for local energy exchanges and flexibility provision to DSOs for a secure, flexible and affordable operation of distribution grids with high shares of renewables.
What are the benefits, as an EU-funded project, of reaching out to ISGAN?
Reaching out to ISGAN will give FlexiGrid an opportunity to present the project to many stakeholders which could be the primary intended stakeholders of FlexiGrid. This is because ISGAN is a very large international network in smart grids where international collaborations are promoted. It is very good to see the workshop has many interesting presentations from different countries and it was very well attended. Another benefit for FlexiGrid is also that we could see what others are doing in the area and identify collaboration opportunities with new partners to increase the impacts from the projects.