IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2015 - 37

across resource areas that are sufficiently dispersed; hence
the need for balancing and backup generation would be significantly lower if multiple regions with sufficiently noncorrelated resource profiles are more effectively interconnected.

Smart Grid Technologies
and Microgrids: Enhancing
Cost-Effectiveness and Resilience
Although the shift from the member-state-centric to an EUwide approach to a decarbonizing electricity system enabled
by an EU megagrid would bring very significant benefits in
integrating solar generation in the south and wind generation
in the north of Europe, it is becoming clear that this vision
should be supported and complemented by the application
of smart grid concepts and technologies in distribution networks to enhance the cost-effectiveness and resilience of the
future EU system.
Clearly, RESs will displace energy produced by conventional plants, but their ability to displace conventional generation capacity will be very limited. This would require
maintaining a significant amount of conventional plant on the
system, leading to asset utilization degradation. The analysis presented in "Benefits of an Integrated European Energy
Market" suggests that the utilization of generation capacity would reduce from the present levels of 55% to 35% by
2025. Furthermore, incorporating the heat and transport sectors into the electricity system will lead to a very significant
increase in peak demand disproportionately higher than the
increase in energy. If the present, business as usual, or "predict and provide" network operation and design philosophy
is maintained, massive electricity infrastructure reinforcements will be required, leading to high investments and low
utilization of assets being less than 25%. Furthermore, massive increases in power transfers across the EU regions would
potentially reduce system resilience by escalating the exposure of the system to large disturbances. The key concern is
that outages of highly loaded transmission circuits on the EU
megagrid would significantly increase system vulnerability
and could potentially lead to large and prolonged blackouts.
If the asset utilization is not to degrade but rather potentially become enhanced, the system resilience and security
that has been traditionally delivered through asset redundancy would need to be provided through more sophisticated control that incorporates advanced technologies
(supported by appropriate communication and information
technologies):
✔ network technologies, such as advanced measurement
and network sensors, advanced power electronics
technologies, and various novel control and protection
schemes, that all enhance the utilization and resilience
of network assets through facilitating a more sophisticated real-time control of the system
✔ demand-side response (DSR), through utilizing the
inherent demand-side flexibility, particularly demand
associated with heat and transport, that can be used
may/june 2015

for real-time system management while ensuring that
the intended service quality is not adversely affected
✔ energy-storage technologies that can be used to support demand-supply balancing or control of network
flows and hence increase the utilization of electricity
infrastructure assets
✔ enhancing the flexibility of distributed and backup generation that can be used to facilitate more secure and
cost-effective real-time demand-supply balance and
control of network flows, hence enhancing the resilience of the local supply and the ability of the system
to absorb intermittent generation and the regional level.
These technologies, through the appropriate information
and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure, will
enable the cost-effective operation of the EU megagrid while
enhancing the resilience of the electricity supply delivered
to end consumers through active, real-time network control
of the local microgrids, as indicated in Figure 2. In this context, microgrids, with appropriate enabling technologies,
will facilitate the paradigm shift in delivering resilience and
security of supply from redundancy in assets and preventive
control to more intelligent operation through corrective control actions supported by a range of enabling technologies
and ICT.
Microgrids can disconnect from the traditional grid, operate autonomously, help mitigate grid disturbances, serve as
a grid resource for faster system response and recovery, and
hence strengthen grid resilience. The proliferation of energy
storage, distributed generation, solid-state equipment, and
greater demand-side participation are, at present, not fully
integrated for a variety of reasons (such as market, regulatory and policy barriers). Furthermore, information management, network measurements, disturbance recognition, and

Megagrid
Smart
Network
Technologies

Demand
Response

Paradigm Shift: From Redundancy in
Assets to Intelligence
Flexible DG

Storage

Microgrids

figure 2. The integration of mega- and microgrids to
facilitate cost-effective and resilient evolution to an EU lowcarbon future.
ieee power & energy magazine

37



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2015

IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2015 - Cover1
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2015 - Cover2
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2015 - 1
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IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2015 - Cover3
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2015 - Cover4
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