How N-SIDE helps DSOs take the most of various sources of flexibility simultaneously: the EUniversal Project

European and worldwide cleaner energy ambitions are high. N-SIDE has been at the forefront of several technology improvements around international energy and balancing markets. This has been done notably by relying on tools to support System Operators developed thanks to its deeptech DNA. 

In the past decade, N-SIDE has been more involved in accompanying DSOs in their new role, especially around local markets through several key projects such as the LEM-Cornwall project, SmartNet, CoordiNet, and Localflex.

All these projects are paving the way for a reliable and sustainable future, avoiding huge investments in avoidable grid reinforcements. 

The risk: unstructured IT setup due to all actors developing very close but different protocols

Nevertheless, numerous actors, ourselves included, launching uncoordinated initiatives can swiftly result in an excessively disorganized IT setup, which is undesirable for three reasons:

• For DSOs starting a contract with a market platform provider, adopting its API (Application Programming Interface) and graphical interface can slowly generate a vendor lock-in effect due to high switching costs. 

• Furthermore, this unstructured setup prevents DSOs from easily leveraging other flexibility sources contracted without an intermediary or through another market platform (active in the same grid area) due to the requirement of using a custom API specific to each provider. 

• Finally, the situation would not be ideal for most market platforms either. In fact, only the first service provider with high market power will make a profit in this situation. Challengers and new entrants willing to quickly scale with competitive offers will also suffer from the vendor lock-in effect. 

Other alternatives, like letting  DSOs impose their own API requirements have their own drawbacks since market platforms can become more expensive due to higher customization costs. Moreover, many DSOs that are less experienced with flexibility market procurement could have difficulties setting up optimal API requirements. 

A standard to build strong foundations 

EUniversal, a 10 MEUR project pushed by the European Commission, has the purpose of dealing with that unstructured IT setup before it is too late! Together, grid operators, universities, research institutes, European associations, and commercial market platform providers are joining forces to build a meaningful standard, easily replicable in new markets.

The solution: rely on strong foundations built today instead of applying a lot of hot-fix patches by 2030 when we will not have the same design freedom as we have now.

The project differs from other European ones by proposing a concrete solution and testing it on the field. Indeed, it gives a practical answer to the question “How to make several market platforms work simultaneously in a given area and ensure competition among local markets?”

N-SIDE's contribution to this project is threefold: co-crafting the standard with all other partners, extending the existing flexibility toolbox by proposing an innovation tool called the N-SIDE Optimal Bid Recommender (OBR), and delivering an advanced market platform relying on the developed standard.

Testing the standard on the field and in different locations

To prove the feasibility of the crafted standard and to test new flexibility mechanisms, three demonstrators located in three different countries of Europe are set up. Proceeding in this manner guarantees that the standard is adaptable to countries with varying geographical shapes, energy mix, and the distribution of the energy mix across the grid. In other words, to ensure this standard is agnostic of the specificities linked with the network operator and its grid relying on it.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 864334.

This article reflects only the N-SIDE view. The European Commission Innovation and Networks Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Co-Author 

Louise Adam is an Energy Optimization Analyst at N-SIDE. Louise holds a Master's degree in Applied Mathematics from UCLouvain (Belgium) during which she focused on machine learning and optimization. At N-SIDE she has contributed to multiple projects around energy markets and flexibility.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 864334.

This article reflects only the N-SIDE view. The European Commission Innovation and Networks Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.