IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2014 - 22

future. It formulated a strategic research
agenda in 2007, which was updated in
2012 to embrace 2035 targets.
a concerted effort to promote the
development and deployment of lowcarbon technologies in europe was initiated in 2007 with the strategic energy
Technologies (seT) plan, complemented
in 2010 by a number of industrial initiatives, in particular the european electricity Grids Initiative (eeGI) for a
coordinated planning of research, development, demonstration, and deployment of modernized electricity grids in
europe. The eeGI produces roadmaps
and implementation plans that represent
a blueprint of needs of the sector, agreed
between transmission and distribution
network operators, equipment manufacturers, regulators, and public authorities.
The roadmap shows the need and the
path to modernizing the european grid,
including distributed intelligence in the
operation of networks to deliver electricity from all new and old generation and to
cover new uses of electricity in a secure
and economical way.
early advances by individual players have shown the way forward, for
example, in the area of smart metering and distribution automation. eneL
(currently enel Distribuzione) started
the deployment of electricity two-way
digital meters to about 30 million Italian households since the beginning of
the 2000 decade. since then, an overall
deployment of smart meters to 80% of
households by 2020 has been agreed at
the european level, and several other eu
utilities, particularly in sweden, Finland, France, and Cyprus, have already
launched their deployment.
Currently, many efforts are directed
toward large-scale demonstration facilities and projects that include smart metering, intelligent customer interaction with
demand response, and distributed intelligence embedded into the existing grid.
some large projects have been launched
at the eu level such as the Fp7 GrID4eu
project; others take place at the memberstate level such as the e-energy program
in Germany, the low-carbon network
projects in the united Kingdom, or the
demonstration project within erDF, the
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ieee power & energy magazine

largest distribution operator in France, for
the Linky smart meters supported by the
French aDeme agency.
From the transmission grid perspective, the development of off-shore wind
generation at a significant scale and new
concepts for the efficient integration of
these generation units into the main eu
grid are under consideration. They motivate the development of supergrids and
especially new high-voltage dc meshed
grids interconnecting wind farms with dc
cables to the classical ac network. european projects such as TwenTIes and
Best paths support the validation of such
technologies, whereas other projects support the coordinated operation of national
transmission grids.
The development of smart grids is
now bustling all over europe with a very
large number of demonstration projects
in all member states covering the whole
energy chain (generation, transmission,
distribution, and customer interaction)
with the aim of introducing, testing,
and deploying low-carbon technologies
into the existing grids from very local
to supergrid concepts. In many cases,
these projects are linked with the emergence of smart cities concepts integrating
smart electricity grids, smart buildings,
multi-utility energy, smart transport, and
sometimes water and waste management.
as such, the announced massive development of plug-in electrical vehicles in
cities must be anticipated, as it can be a
source of difficulties or opportunities for
the power sector, depending on whether
or not the charging processes can be
exploited and coordinated with power
system management.

The Articles in This Issue
The first article, by henry et al., explains
the evolutions of the eu transmission
system networks in a contribution from
transmission system operators (Tsos)
and analyzes the impact of renewable
energies on the operation of transmission grids.
The european transmission grid and
Tsos are at the core of the complex
european electrical system. They face
four challenges critical for guaranteeing
the success of the eu energy transition:

✔ 1) enabling the development of

renewable energies.
at the european level, the objective
is to push toward an optimal usage of
available renewable resources, leading to growing wind power generation
on and off shore in the northern seas,
the Baltic sea, and surrounding areas;
increasing production of solar electricity
from southern europe; exploiting bio
and hydro energy where available; and
in a longer time frame, ocean and geothermal energies.
✔ 2) Toward a flexible electrical
consumption: the contribution of
intelligent load control.
The supply and demand balancing
process is complex and continuously
challenging in the context of current and
future eu energy mix. The variability of
a number of renewable sources requires
increased flexibility from the power system and, in particular, increased flexibility from electricity consumption.
✔ 3) Developing and adapting grid
infrastructures for strengthening
the support between heterogeneous areas.
The pan-european electrical transmission grid, as a vector of integration
between national, regional, and european
levels, allows local energy policies to be
set while ensuring overall adequacy. It
helps to compensate regional imbalances
by using complementarities and support
between areas. Cross-border flows of
electricity have rapidly increased with
the opening of markets and with the
large renewable installations. These will
require a substantial increase in transmission capacity in the pan-european grid.
✔ 4) Developing the intelligence of
the transmission grid, allowing
the deployment of new services
for more flexibility and for system optimization.
an architectured market "software"
will allow the optimal use of these infrastructures. These mechanisms allow
flexibility, ensure liquidity to market
participants, and provide optimization
of electricity imports-exports through
interconnections.
The second article, by Feix, illustrates
this discussion with a description of the
march/april 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2014