Technologies and Protocols: The Experience of the Three SmartNet Pilots

Abstract

The deployment of technological pilots is of paramount importance for testing and demonstrating the technical feasibility of the concepts described in this book for two main reasons. On the one hand, there are few real-life experiences in the application of these concepts, as TSO-DSO coordination is a relatively new topic. On the other hand, there may be some implementation difficulties which cannot be anticipated by the scenario analysis and CBA. Whenever possible, more than one pilot should be deployed, so that each of them can focus on different parts of the TSO-DSO coordination value chain. In that sense, it is important to demonstrate different potential TSO-DSO coordination schemes, so that issues arising from each of them can be identified. Moreover, it is also important to demonstrate different types of DER, so that their flexibilities can be better assessed and the advantages and disadvantages for real-life implementation can be properly identified and addressed. As a third complementarity aspect, having different technological pilots allows for focusing on different parts of the value chain, so that one of them may take the vision of the TSO or DSO, while another one can focus on the needs of the aggregator or DER owners.