EUniversal

The EUniversal project concluded its activities in November 2023. On this page, you can discover its results and key learnings.

Grid’s flexibility has been identified as a key enabler toward sustainable, low‐carbon and climate‐friendly energy systems. In this system, consumers shall become the main players, reflecting one of the most important Energy Union priorities.

The EUniversal project has developed a universal approach on the use of flexibility by Distribution System Operators (DSO) and their interaction with the new flexibility markets, enabled through the development of the concept of the Universal Market Enabling Interface (UMEI) – a unique approach to foster interoperability across Europe.

The UMEI represents an innovative, agnostic, adaptable, modular and evolutionary approach that will be the basis for the development of new innovative services, market solutions and, above all, implementing the real mechanisms for active consumer, prosumer, and energy communities participation in the energy transition.

The four structural pillars of the EUniversal project were:

• Flexibility enabling technologies and solutions.
• Smart grid solutions.
• Flexibility of market mechanisms, products and platforms.
• The Universal Market Enabling Interface (UMEI).

Thereby, the EUniversal has developed and validated a set of market-oriented flexibility management services from distributed energy resources (DER) in a real environment with a large renewable energy sources (RES) integration and high electrification. These innovative services were tested in 3 EU Members States – Portugal, Germany and Poland.  Based on this transformative concept, grids will become capable of accommodating future scenarios through the active use of grid services, fostering innovative market mechanisms, and bringing additional value to society.

 

Hard Facts

Objectives

Key performance indicators, as specified in D6.2, are:

• • Increased RES / DER hosting capacity.

• • Increase storage solutions penetration.

• • SAIDI / SAIFI improvement using a novel methodology for including grid resilience metric in planning and operation of the distribution grid.

• • Develop standardized flexibility services for distribution grids provided by DER, storage, microgrids or energy communities, through UMEI, with different regulatory / grid contexts.

• • Distribution grid investment avoidance or deferral using flexibility.

• • Power of flexibility activated by energy players.

• • Reinforcement of Distribution Grid Resilience, including in extreme events.

 

E.DSO and DSOs

The project aimed at transforming the market by enabling the coordination between DSOs and market players through agnostic technology integration of market platforms. System planning and operation shall reduce distribution grid investments due to the increased use of flexibility, allowed by new data-driven tools to pre-identify technical problems and define the most adequate control actions to accommodate DERs and EVs, and resilience-driven planning tools shall allow for the reinforcement of distribution grid resilience and flexibility to extreme events.

The services generated in the development phase of the project were tested in 3 different demonstration sites in Portugal, Germany, and Poland. E.DSO was tasked with the harmonization of these demonstrations:

• Portuguese demo: Demonstration of the UMEI concept in the management of market-driven flexibility services for LV and MV grids.
• German demo: Congestion management using market‐driven flexibility via the UMEI in LV networks.
• Polish demo: Grid observability and future networks supporting flexibility management via the UMEI.

A strong focus was put on active consumer participation and access to markets, allowing them to be part of the energy transition. Additionally, DSOs were regarded as active system managers and market facilitators corresponding to their evolving roles in electricity markets as well.

Eventually, the development of the UMEI will allow for future standardization of an interface capable of easily integrating, in an open and safe environment, DSOs, market agents as well as TSOs platforms. This will allow for effective market enablement, resulting in an interoperable ecosystem. EUniversal’s key concept is open, adaptable, and futureproof to be used by all stakeholders, thus facilitating replicability across Europe. The outcomes will enable distribution grids across Europe to support a secure and cost‐effective energy transition in cooperation with all related parties. The strong commitment of partners such as E.DSO, E-REDES, E.ON with MitNetz, and Energa introduces additional assurance for the promotion of a pan‐European grid approach.

 

More Information

• All public deliverables
• Booklet summarising project results
• Final deliverable: Exploitation of results and roadmap
• Regulatory recommendations for flexibility options and markets
• Documentation of UMEI platform
• Polish demo results and results of UMEI concept test
• German demo results
• Portuguese demo results and results of UMEI concept test
• Evaluation of market mechanisms: challenges and opportunities

 

Contact: projects@edsoforsmartgrids.eu