In August 2022, we launched the second and final phase of the DT4Flex project together with Cuerva, Bamboo Energy and Smart City Cluster, through which we are developing a digital twin of the distribution network. This tool will enable the management of flexibility services to solve technical problems in the grid. The project is supported by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism under the 2022 Extraordinary Call for Aid to Innovative Business Clusters (AEI), as part of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
This project reflects the objectives of Smart City Cluster itself, which include boosting public–private cooperation to increase the competitiveness of its members as leaders of the smart cities industry.
The main objective of the project “DT4Flex – Low-Voltage Digital Twin for Flexibility Services” is to develop a tool capable of predicting short-term events in the low-voltage network and assessing the availability of flexibility services to solve the problems arising from those events, thereby maximising the safe penetration of new players.
During the first phase of the project, given the growing importance of being able to operate low-voltage networks and with the aim of guaranteeing their resilience and continuity of supply for the population while maximising the integration of new connections, at Ingelectus we worked on the development of an innovative solution to equip the DSO with tools to operate distribution networks from a technical standpoint. With the idea that the DSO should play a role similar to that of the TSO in the transmission network, we have researched and developed a tool that allows the DSO to pinpoint its needs and quantify the optimal flexibility service to address them.
To this end, we have researched and implemented innovative technologies which, on the one hand, ensure realistic and accurate observability of the operating state of distribution networks, adapted to the availability of measurements and to the events that could cause problems on the grid; and, on the other hand, identify and quantify the optimal combination of flexibility services to be activated to prevent these risk situations as efficiently as possible.
In addition, a microservices-based software architecture has been designed and developed to host this technology, so that it can be easily deployed on the DSO’s infrastructure in both cloud and edge environments, thus guaranteeing its scalability. This architecture has been validated in a specific area of Cuerva’s Living Lab, built on a real infrastructure and population, with high-resolution data that can be accessed in near real time. This test environment includes Advanced Supervision meters in medium and low voltage, a full smart metering rollout and monitoring of distributed solar generation, as well as agents capable of providing energy flexibility, such as batteries or electric vehicle charging points.
The tests carried out during the first phase have focused on reducing overvoltage events and line congestion, as well as maximising photovoltaic penetration in the network described above. The results obtained have been highly satisfactory:
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They have demonstrated the possibility of preventing incidents by minimising the amount of flexibility that needs to be activated in the network.
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They have helped to characterise the future needs for flexible capacity in the grid based on real tests.
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They have contributed to defining protocols for connecting photovoltaic installations in critical networks, such as low-voltage networks.
Building on the progress made, a second phase has been launched with more ambitious goals:
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Extending the tests to a larger area within Cuerva’s Living Lab, thus increasing the diversity of incidents, network typologies and flexibility service providers.
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Together with Bamboo Energy, incorporating the role of the demand aggregator to evaluate the solution in more realistic scenarios for future local flexibility markets.
Finally, it is worth highlighting that the initial results delivered by the project, and the decision to move forward with a new phase, clearly demonstrate how important it is for distribution companies to adapt their business models to the new technologies that Ingelectus is developing for the market, as well as the need to foster collaboration between companies that together cover the entire value chain of the electricity sector.
