UBE participates in OneNet project’s first GRIFOn workshop

GRIFOn (GRId Forum) is an initiative launched by OneNet H2020 project to promote and facilitate the creation of a community of stakeholders interested to collaborate and actively tackle the most pressing issues regarding the future European electricity markets.

The first GRIFOn workshop took place on 5th November, focusing on two topics:

  • A harmonized European IT architecture for market and network operation
  • Services, products, and market design for a harmonised European electricity market

UBITECH ENERGY team participated presenting the methodology adopted for developing the OneNet use cases and the requirements extracted from these use cases in order to be integrated in the OneNet architecture design ensuring that all the requirements of the 13 demonstration countries were considered. In addition, UBE team presented the objectives of the work carried out regarding the development of a harmonised framework for system services, products and market designs.

The workshop was closed by an interactive panel discussion. In the first breakout session, the panellists discussed how OneNet architecture relates to other relevant established architectures and what kind of cyber-secure mechanisms are being considered for handling the often highly critical information exchange. In the second breakout session, the participants’ opinions were asked regarding the available options for solving local congestions in both transmission and distribution grids and the mechanisms facilitating the engagement of flexibility service providers.

UBITECH Energy participates at the kick-off of the ELECTRON Innovation Action on resilient and self-healed electrical power nanogrid

UBITECH Energy participates at the virtual kick-off meeting hosted by INTRASOFT INTERNATIONAL (October 14-15, 2021) of the ELECTRON Innovation Action, officially started on October 1st, 2021. The project is funded by European Commission under Horizon 2020 Programme (Grant Agreement No. 101021936) and spans on the period October 2021 – September 2024. The ELECTRON project aims to deliver a new-generation EPES platform, capable of empowering the resilience of energy systems against cyber, privacy, and data attacks through four main pillars, i.e. risk assessment and certification, anomaly detection and prevention, failure mitigation and energy restoration, and addressing internal threats and gaps through AR-VR-based personnel training and certification, while fostering the cyber protection standardization and certification via three novel authorities, namely the cybersecurity lighthouse, the cybersecurity training and certification authority, and the energy trading centre.

Within ELECTRON, UBITECH Energy contributes at the formulation of the energy personnel training and certification framework for cybersecurity and privacy as a live-service supporting technologies such as augmented and virtual reality, as well as at the promotion the ELECTRON-related policies, protocols, acts, directives, and standards, while contributing to the EU policies and acts that are related to the critical infrastructure and the energy protection and cybersecurity.

Moreover, UBITECH ENERGY’s parent company UBITECH participates in ELECTRON, as well, designing and developing the ARMY Collaborative Risk Assessment & Vulnerability Analysis Framework, tailored for Electrical Power & Energy Systems (EPES), taking into consideration multiple international and European risk assessment standards, e.g., ISO/IEC 27000 Series of standards, the EU general risk assessment methodology, as well as the NIST  Cybersecurity Framework Version 1.1, concerning IT security and especially those ones focused on the EPES ICT-related security and  privacy.

UBITECH ENERGY is awarded by ENTSO-E a study about the “Integration of the Power and Heat Sectors”

The European Commission’s legislative package (Fit for 55 package) aims to ensure that EU policies are in line with the climate goals agreed by the Council and the European Parliament by revising and updating EU legislation and by putting in place new initiatives. This set of proposals includes an Amendment of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), which showcases the importance that energy efficiency will play in the energy transition. In this context, the concept of sector coupling (SC) has been emerged, representing an approach to replace fossil fuels with energy from renewable electricity sources. One of the most prominent coupling of sectors is the integration of the power and heat sectors, i.e., either by direct electrification from renewable energy sources or power transformation in order to be used for residential/district level heating (power-to-heat, also known as P2H).

Towards this quest, the Working Group 4 (WG4) Future of Energy Systems of the Research, Development and Innovation Committee (RDIC) of ENTSO-E awarded UBITECH ENERGY a contract to perform a study with TSO perspective on Integration of the Power and Heat Sectors. The goal is to conduct a comprehensive study, focused on the potential benefits, e.g., unlocking flexibility potential through sector coupling, increased VRES integration, reduced VRES curtailment, and challenges, such as grid impact assessment, energy adequacy and grid adequacy, that TSOs will have to address in the coming years.

Successful first review for the FARCROSS H2020 Innovation Action

The first review of the FARCROSS H2020 Innovation Action research project with external reviewers and the Project Officer from the EC side took place on June 16, 2021, wherein the FARCROSS consortium successfully presented the results of the work of the project during the first 18 months of the project. The FARCROSS project aims to connect major stakeholders of the energy value chain and demonstrate integrated hardware and software solutions that will facilitate the “unlocking” of the resources for the cross-border electricity flows and regional cooperation. The project will promote state-of-the-art technologies to enhance the exploitation/capacity/efficiency of transmission grid assets, either on the generation or the transmission level.

UBITECH ENERGY research group, as the project’s technical coordinator, presented the project’s progress towards its technical and operational objectives, as well as a summary of the project’s achievements so far. The reviewers and the PO were impressed with the overall results of the project and provided some interesting feedback and recommendations for future work.

UBΕ participates at the 10th InnoGrid Edition ‘Living the Transition’ conference on energy transition

UBITECH ENERGY’s Anastasis Tzoumpas, Head of Electrical Power & Energy Systems Unit, will participate as speaker and panellist at the 10th InnoGrid Edition ‘Living the Transition’, organized by the European Distribution System Operators’ Association (E.DSO) and the European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E) on Friday, 4 June and Friday, 11 June.

InnoGrid has been the annual appointment on European innovation in power networks for a decade now. For its 10th edition – ‘Living the transition’ – InnoGrid will highlight the paramount role of networks in the energy transition and how they are enabling it today. In that context on 11 June, a selection of EU funded projects including FARCROSS will showcase how they can accelerate the transition.

UBE, as FARCROSS’s technical coordinator, will present how FARCROSS can boost the energy transition by demonstrating integrated hardware and software solutions that will facilitate the “unlocking” of the resources for the cross-border electricity flows and regional cooperation.

Discover the programme and register here: https://www.innogrid.eu/

FARCROSS Webinar Innovative solutions for increased regional cross-border cooperation a complete success

UBITECH ENERGY team co-organized the webinar “Innovative solutions for increased regional cross-border cooperation: the FARCROSS project” hosted by International Smart Grid Action Network (ISGAN) that took place virtually on March 1st, 2021.

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UBITECH ENERGY kicks off the SMART5GRID Project

UBITECH ENERGY participates at the virtual kick-off meeting hosted by ENEL (January 19-21, 2021)  and reaching 160 attendees from almost 70 different external companies. 5G is envisioned to be the first global technology standard that will address the variety of future use cases of the energy sector, by ensuring that both the radio and core network performance requirements can be met in terms of endto-end latency, reliability, and availability.

The Smart5Grid project, officially started on January 1st 2021, aims to revolutionise the Energy industry through the successful establishment of four fundamental functions of modern smart grids, i.e., (i) automatic power distribution grid fault detection, (ii) remote inspection of automatically delimited working areas, (iii) millisecond level precise distribution generation control, and (iv) real-time wide area monitoring in a creative cross-border scenario, thus assisting power grid operators and other energy stakeholders.

Smart5Grid introduces an open 5G experimental facility, supporting integration, testing and validation of existing and new 5G services and NetApps from third parties (i.e., SMEs, developers, engineers, etc., that do not belong in the consortium) since underpinning experimentation with a fully softwarised 5G platform for the energy vertical industry is one of the key targets of the proposal.

The project is funded by European Commission under Horizon 2020 Programme (Grant Agreement No. 101016912) and spans on the period January 2021 – December 2023.

Within Smart5Grid, UBITECH ENERGY contributes towards the elaboration of the use cases and the system requirements analysis and to the definition of the system-level technical specifications and technological choices for 5G enabled smart energy grids. Moreover, UBITECH ENERGY will actively contribute towards the integration of high levels of variable renewable energy sources into 5G connected smart grids by overseeing and supporting all the stages of the real-life demonstration; from the preparation of the Smart5Grid field platform and NetApps integration and validation to the actual field demonstrations.

FARCROSS 2nd Press Release is here

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UBITECH Energy at H2020 Transmission Grids Projects Clustering Workshop

The H2020 Transmission Grids Projects Clustering Workshop, took place virtually on 2nd December 2020. The goal of this clustering activity was the analysis of the efforts by different H2020 projects on Electric Transmission Grid to define TSO-DSO collaboration schemas.

In this context, Ubitech Energy presented FARCROSS project that promotes state-of-the art technologies to enhance the exploitation/capacity/efficiency of transmission grid assets, either on the generation or the transmission level. Mr. Anastasios Tzoumpas, the technical coordinator presented the project concept, the technical challenges, the research activities and expected scientific impact of FARCROSS project.

Then, an extensive discussion took place on ideas for possible further joint activities that have been identified from the project presentations, such as AC-DC hybrid grids, TSO-DSO cooperation, and cross-border power exchanges.

Finally, all workshop participants agreed on potential synergies and opportunities for future actions.

 

Ianos Press Release kicks off!

Read the first Press Release of IANOS project  here