only be extremely costly but would also have significant impacts on the reliability and quality of supply due to the numerous long outages that would be required. There is therefore a strong rationale for designing a better asset management program that could save money while maintaining the required level of reliability. This topic is now part of the enTso-e r&D roadmap, and rTe is starting a new, ambitious internal project to address it: smart lab (see Figure 9). The project is structured around five targets: ✔ improving the monitoring of transmission network components, using both classic and new means of observation, such as drones ✔ understanding component aging mechanisms, using a combination of "big data" methods, laboratory experiments, and multi physics simulations ✔ forecasting individual component failure probabilities and life spans ✔ providing decision-making tools for all Tsos' time Wave Energy Wind Energy Bioenergy Solar Energy Electricity Highways 2050 figure 7. The location of renewable energy sources across Europe (source: ENTSO-E). Architecture 1 OPTIMATE Given Optimal Vision (LT) Simulation Optimate Vision (ST) The Recommended Architecture Is OPTIMATE Architecture 1 Architecture 2 figure 8. The principles of the OPTIMATE simulation platform (source: RTE). march/april 2014 ieee power & energy magazine 33