FARCROSS – FAcilitating Regional CROSS-border Electricity Transmission through Innovation

DESCRIPTION
To this end, FARCROSS aims to address this challenge by connecting major stakeholders of the energy value chain and demonstrating integrated hardware and software solutions that will facilitate the “unlocking” of the resources for the cross-border electricity flows and regional cooperation. The project will promote state-of-the-art technologies to enhance the exploitation/capacity/efficiency of transmission grid assets, either on the generation or the transmission level.
The hardware and software solutions will increase grid observability to facilitate system operations at a regional level, exploit the full potential of transmission corridors for increased electricity flows that will facilitate transition to flow-based regional market coupling, consider cross-border connections and their specific ICT and grid infrastructure, planning to use a wide-area protection approach to ensure the safe integration of renewable energy sources into the grid, mitigate disturbances, increase power system stability.
An innovative regional forecasting platform will be demonstrated for improved prognosis of renewable generation and demand response and a capacity reserves optimization tool will be tested to maximize cross-border flows. The non-harmonization of national regulation will be studied and measures will be recommended to avoid distortion of the technology benefits.
OBJECTIVES
- To test the state-of-the-art digital technologies, installed on the power grid and communication infrastructure for optimally exploiting and maximising the capacity and security of transmission corridors.
- To develop and introduce advance software solutions to increase the cross-border capacity and the potential of cross-border grid services.
- To design and propose a robust set of technical and market codes (pathways) that would enable the building up of the harmonisation of the network codes, and subsequently to the integration of national electricity markets -possibly via a regional route.
- To design and present a cost-benefit analysis (CBA), based on the outcomes and lessons learnt from the project implementations and demonstrations, to enhance the planning of cross-border infrastructure investments.
- To demonstrate the aforementioned hardware and software technologies and relevant concepts in realistic environments.
CIRCE´s ROLE
In this sense, CIRCE will take a relevant role in the following activities:
- Definition of the study cases and identification of the critical scenarios
- Analysis of measurement techniques of inter-area oscillations
- Development of automatic toolboxes for Power System simulation platforms
- Study of optimal location of measuring and operation points for the implementation of WAMPAC solutions
- Study of the contribution of active elements to damp oscillations
- Modelling in Real-Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) of the defined grids
- Development of the WAMPAC system including the algorithms for wide area protection algorithms
- Laboratory tests
- SCADA development for field demonstration
- Communication infrastructure definition and technology and standards usage for field demonstration
- Field tests, improvements and analysis of results
- Definition and assessment of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the degree of completion of the Demo