Telco Telecom Slovenije—Slovenia’s fixed-line communications provider—announced this week that it would head a 36-month, US$6.2 million (€4.8 million) smart grid initiative, of which US$4.2 million (€3.2 million) will be funded by the European Commission.
The objective of the eBADGE Project is to create a single pan-European market for gas and electricity, using ICT tools to facilitate aggregated demand response and distributed generation capacity.
The smart grid project will pilot test an ”intelligent [load] balancing mechanism on the borders of Austria, Italy and Slovenia,” which will integrate a virtual power plant and cloud technology that facilitate “the management of the electricity transmission and distribution grids in an optimized, controlled and secure manner.”
The development of the eBADGE Project will follow guidelines from the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), to deliver five results:
- A simulation and modeling tool for studying integrated load balancing/the power reserve market, and allowing the participation of the virtual power plant (VPP) at the distribution side;
- A uniform high-performance message bus—which powers messaging across email and mobile channels—between balancing and reserve entities;
- Business models covering the energy, ICT and residential consumers sectors;
- A virtual power plant— which is a cluster of distributed generation installations that are collectively run by a central control entity—as a reliable balancing asset
- A pilot eBADGE cloud.
The consortium that will execute the eBADGE project will be coordinated by Telco Telecom Slovenije and will comprise the following members: Elektro Ljubljana Podjetje Zadistribucijo Elektricine Energije DD (Slovenia); Borzen, Organizator Trgaz Elektricno Energijo, DOO (Slovenia); Elktro-Slovenija, DOO (Slovenia), Xlab Razvoj Programske Opreme in Svetovanje, DOO (Slovenia); Ricera Sul Sistema (News - Alert) Energetico–RSE SPA (Italy); Technische Universitaet Wien (Austria); Vaasaett Ltd. AB OY(Finland); Cybergrid GMBH (Austria; Sauper Umweltdatentechnik GMBH (Austria); Austrian Power Grid AG (Austria) AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GMBH (Austria); and SAP (News - Alert) AG (Germany).
The consortium initially will design and implement the single components of the plan, which will then be individually tested and validated; and finally, integrated into a platform. The validation of the individual components will be done using historical data and simulation (simulation and modeling tool)and expert knowledge in the consortium (message bus validation), as well as through designed and developed scenarios and field trials (home energy cloud and pilot eBADGE cloud).
The collaborative project is scheduled for completion on September 30, 2015.
Edited by Brooke Neuman