Smart TSO-DSO interaction schemes, market architectures and ICT
Solutions for the integration of ancillary services from demand side
management and distributed generation
IEEE PES PowerTech Manchester 2017
SS03: Ancillary services from distribution networks | 19.06.2017
Communication and ICT requirements for
allowing system services from distribution grids
Seppo Horsmanheimo, Principal Scientist, VTT
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 691405
Background
 Today, resources connected to the distribution grid are providing limited
ancillary services.
 In the future, smart grid offers new ancillary services facilitating wider
range of market participants such as renewable energy sources,
aggregators, consumers, and new types of stakeholders.
 Especially, large-scale deployment of distributed generation and storage
are boosting the utilization of automation and ICT.
 The foreseen bidirectional energy and information flows make the
requirements for ICT more versatile and more demanding.
2
Challenge
 In order to fully exploit the potential offered by future ICT technologies,
we need to be able to identify the actual requirements.
 The challenge is that it will take some time before new TSO-DSO
coordination schemes are realized.
 Meanwhile, ICT systems and communication technologies evolve even
faster making it more difficult to choose the suitable communication
technologies for different parts of the energy system.
3
New technologies with new opportunities
Media content delivery
high data rates
low latency
VR/AR
public authorities
low data rates
wearable devices
low power consumption
high device density
low cost
Massive Machine
Type Communications
5G
high reliability
high availability
ultra-low latency
Ultra-Reliable Low Latency
Communications
4
Approach to capture ICT requirements in the
SmartNet project
ICT requirements were captured and
prioritized in top-down and bottom-up
manners.
The study of new ICT technologies
included:
 Coordination schemes and service
use cases were analyzed for
creating business and function
layers (top-down).
 Wireless sensor networks
 Information exchanges between
system components were studied
for creating component,
communication, and information
layers (bottom-up).
 Mobile networks including 5G
 Low-power wide area networks
(licensed and unlicensed)
 Centralized and distributed service
architectures
 Data hubs
 Blockchain
5
Requirements to consider

Communication technology covering backbone
and access networks
Classification

Latency and security aspects

Network requirements

Bandwidth

Coverage

Security requirements

Scalability

Latency requirements

Ownership

Terminal density

Data requirements

Interface flexibility

Technology related

OPEX and CAPEX costs

Market characteristics

Reliability

Security (integrity, availability, confidentiality,
authentication, non-repudiation)

Data and communication protocols
requirements
6
Design and analysis process
7
Core design models
Parametrized SGAM model to investigate
e.g. link activity and possibility to use
wireless technologies.
A reference model to discover ICT
requirements with energy experts.
8
Conclusion

The work revealed that defining ICT requirements for future ancillary services is
challenging:
o Unclear requirements and value ranges
o ICT evolution cycle is different compared to energy systems

Choosing suitable communication options depends on various factors e.g. market
and national characteristics, existing communication infrastructure, regulation,
maturity of technologies, and investment and operation costs.

We need new tools to support the design and analysis
o Reference model to help identifying interactions between different system components
o Pre-compiled ICT requirement table to select requirements for communication links
o Parametrized SGAM model to maintain system complexity in different SGAM layers and
to generate visual presentations of different system alternatives
9
SmartNet-Project.eu
This presentation reflects only the author’s view and the Innovation and Networks
Executive Agency (INEA) is not responsible for any use that may be made of the
information it contains.
Thank You
Seppo Horsmanheimo
Contact Information
Affiliation:
VTT
TECHNICAL RESEARCH CENTRE OF FINLAND LTD
Phone:
Email:
+358 40 5423 599
[email protected]