The project has 17 partners, 4 of them Spanish, and is financed with more than 7.1 million euros by the European Commission.
The European project PARITY starts with the objective of developing a series of solutions to increase the flexibility of the electrical distribution networks. These innovations will increase the durability and efficiency of the grid, as well as a better control in real time, in a general context of electricity production that is expected to be 50% from renewable energy in 2030.
In addition, PARITY will go beyond traditional network management practices by developing a locally based flexibility management platform that will integrate IoT (Internet of Things) and Blockchain technologies. In doing so, the project will improve the ability to manage electric charging systems, including electric vehicles, and distribution network operations to ensure both security of supply and the use of flexible products while integrating the variability of renewable energies.
An international consortium of 17 partners from Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria will be responsible for carrying forward over the next three years this project funded by the European Commission through its program H2020 with 7.1 million euros. Among them, the CIRCE Foundation, the Cuerva Group, Urbener and the University of Deusto are the national partners.
Hoping that the solutions developed by PARITY can be replicated in different European countries, the project hopes to achieve an economic saving of 125 billion euros in the investment of new distribution networks if flexibility is favoured; a reduction in the emission of 100 million tonnes of CO2; and the creation of between 3,000 and 10,000 new jobs by 2050.
The project will be broken down into three phases. Firstly, the technical and functional specifications of the solutions will be defined and the identification of the interested agents will be carried out, followed by the development and design of the technology and its integration into the system and testing of the solutions. These will be implemented in four pilots located in Spain, Greece, Sweden and Switzerland.
For its part, CIRCE will lead the work packages related to the management and optimization of the network and the definition of the system architecture and use cases. Therefore, it will participate actively in the Spanish demonstrator developing control algorithms to improve the flexibility of the network and will also implement a STATCOM that will improve the stability of the network.