Romanian Energy Center contributes to the success of 10th WiseGRID Consortium Meeting

By the Romanian Energy Center

The Romanian Energy Center Association (CRE) has successfully organised the 10^th Consortium Meeting of the Horizon 2020 European Project "WiseGRID - Wide scale demonstration of Integrated Solutions and business models for European smart GRID", coordinated by the Spanish Group ETRA, on 22^nd – 23^rd October 2019 in Sinaia, Romania. WiseGRID will deliver to the European Commission, project partners and stakeholders, a set of solutions and technologies for developing intelligence, increasing the stability and security of European electricity networks, through various methods including energy storage technologies, the widespread use of electric vehicles and integration of a share of at least 50% of energy from renewable sources (RES). The project started on November 1^st, 2016 and will lasts for 42 months.

Partners of the WiseGRID Consortium presented in the first part of the event the updated achievements of each work package, as well as the action plan needed to finalise the report to be delivered to the European Commission by the end of the project, in April 2020. The second part of this meeting consisted of a seminar related to the Exploitation Plan of the products and services resulting from the intensive innovation, research and development activities performed in the first thirty months of the WiseGRID implementation.

The seminar was coordinated by Andrea DI ANSELMO, the expert appointed by the European Commission.

Over 50 delegates took part actively in the discussions during the two days of the project meeting, opened by the CRE vicepresident, Mihai Păun. "It is a great honour and a professional pride for the CRE representatives and CRE members to welcome the WiseGRID project delegation today in Sinaia. We are delighted to work with you on the successful implementation of this ambitious and representative project for its significant impact we all want to create in the Consortium's business and innovation activities - with an Return on Investment (ROI) for the partners of less than 30 months after commercialisation of WiseGRID products and services starts – and the European sector at large, contributing to the creation of jobs, the access to new energy services of citizens and public and private organisations, saving of CO₂, and increase RES, among other impacts." The achievement of these strategic goals will involve  Demand Response, Smartening the Distribution Grid,  Demonstrating Energy Storage Technologies and the Smart Integration of Grid Users from Transport.

During the two days of work, the CRE team presented its own achievements, with details on the aspects related to the GDPR compliance provisions for Personal Data Protection and the development and testing of the BigData Platform for WiseGRID. Mihai Sănduleac, Cătălin Chimrel and Paul Lăcătuș presented the operation and the integration stage in the pilot sites (Mesogia in Greece, Terni in Italy and Crevillent in Spain) for the Congestion Forecast Orchestrator module within the Cockpit application, and how to use this module. The results of this proposed application, developed by CRE and presented by Mihai Sănduleac, are to be detailed in the framework of the deliverable D15.2 WiseGRID integrated ecosystem intermediate deployment and demonstration. The module includes "taking over" of network and regime  data (including consumption and production forecasts from RES), daily running of steady state regimes over the 24 hour intervals, identifying congestion and possible solutions to eliminate congestion, while also launching the market module for obtaining flexibility offers, that can facilitate the management of congestion.

The Agenda of the Consortium meeting was complemented by a technical visit to the Hydro Power Plant Museum “Sinaia 0”, one of the first power plants in the Prahova county, which together with the Câmpina thermal power plant, contributed to the creation of the first electricity microgrid in 1911 with the purpose of power supply for oil wells installed in the region. A short visit to the Peles Royal Castle closed the meeting’s agenda. 

The next meeting of the WiseGRID Consortium will be organized in February 2020 and will most probably be hosted by WiseGRID partners in Ghent, Belgium.