The purpose of this report is to present an overview of the results from the workshop and high-level panel discussion, “Intelligent market design – boosting global smart grid deployment,” organized by International Smart Grid Action Network (ISGAN) and the Swedish Smart Grid Forum in conjunction with the 9th Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM), 24 May 2018 and as a part of the Nordic Clean Energy Week in Malmö and Copenhagen.
The report gives a summary of the discussions and conclusions from the workshop and includes the background policy brief prepared by representatives from the organizers based on relevant position papers and studies from, for example, ISGAN, IEA, and IRENA as well as individual feedback from ISGAN national experts and the Swedish Smart Grid Forum representatives. The final version presented here also includes input received during the workshop on May 23.

Nowadays, due to the increasing presence of distributed energy resources and the integration of automation and communication technologies the electric power system is evolving towards the smart grid paradigm. Typically, smart grid projects are responsible of wide range impacts which span from the electrical power system to the entire society. Often, these impacts are not easily quantifiable thus an assessment based on their monetary value is not attainable. In this context, traditional approaches as the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) become unfit. The reliable assessment of several planning options can be obtained by using hybrid approaches which combine monetary appraisal tools within a generalised framework based on multi-criteria analysis (MCA). A combined MC-CBA approach preserves the advantages of each methodology while overcoming the respective weaknesses. This report describes the mathematical model of the MC-CBA framework for smart grid projects proposed in previous research activities. This model is exploited by the original software MC-CBA toolkit, which is presented in this document. The MC-CBA toolkit aims at supporting the decision makers by providing an assessment framework which rejects any personal bias by preserving the stakeholders’ interests. In fact, the MC-CBA toolkit allows for an output-based assessment of the smart grid alternatives based on an automated comparison procedure. The MC-CBA toolkit decomposes the decision-making problem by dividing the impacts in three main areas: economic impacts, the contribution towards the smart grid realisation, the externality impacts. The calculation procedure for identifying the best option of the set under analysis relies on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). In order to illustrate the effectiveness of the MC-CBA toolkit, a case study focused on project selection among different smart grid development plans is presented. More specifically, a set of different upgrading plans based on the Active Distribution Network (ADN) approach and the siting and sizing of distributed energy storage is analysed. The MC-CBA toolkit helps the decision maker to identify the best smart grid investment option; the final aim is to provide a reliable support tool for effectively orienting the investments and the regulatory policies on smart grids.

System efficiency is a multifaceted concept, which in the present document is broken down in the dimensions of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, energy and economic efficiency.
In order to improve the efficiency of a given system there are a number of available solutions at the disposal of policymakers and market actors. In this work, five action areas have been chosen and defined – multi-energy systems, electric storage, electric mobility, demand side management and automation & sensor technologies – and a review of activities and initiatives currently underway in several countries has been presented.
The efficiency measures and indicators identified in this report are key for bringing about the vision of an environmentally friendly and economically profitable electrical energy system, although some alternatives are not yet at a stage where they could be readily deployed in a systematic or widespread manner. In these cases and depending on the specific circumstances, regulatory policies and support measures can provide guidance and sustenance to overcome the uncertainties of future developments and promote potentially promising solutions.

13 Jun 2018 @ 14:00 CEST

The webinar deals with distribution planning in the era of smart grids. It is based on the CIGRE WG C6.19 activity. The main topics of the webinar are:

• Role and objectives of distribution planning
• Shortcomings of traditional planning in the current context
• Distribution planning in the era of Smart Grids
  • Load and generation representation, flexibility
  • Probabilistic models for distribution planning
  • Multi objective optimization
  • Smart Grid in distribution planning
• Multi-energy systems
• Cyber-physical simulation
• Example of application and case studies

Watch the webinar or find out more at Leonardo Energy.