The flagship project Industry4Redispatch (I4RD) is designed as a key project within the model region NEFI – New Energy for Industry. I4RD will be the first NEFI project that develops innovative grid-supportive solutions enabling (i) the provision of flexibility from the demand and supply-side at distribution network level for redispatch and (ii) the demonstration of an online, predictive and ho-listic control concept for industrial energy supply systems, which optimizes a company’s market participation while assuring its energy supply. With this ap-proach, the expected results will enable participation of industry in redispatch and help to boost technological development within the NEFI community, espe-cially by contributing to the central NEFI-innovation fields through digitalization and flexiblization of the industry.
Initial situation, problem to solve and motivation to carry out the flagship project:
A growing need for redispatch is largely caused by the integration of intermittent renewable generation and progressive integration of highly meshed European networks and it is bound to increase in the future. The costs for redispatch for Austria have been rapidly increasing from 23 M€ in 2015 to 117 M€ in 2018.
Redispatch is a necessary measure for congestion management at the trans-mission system level in order maintain n-1 secure operation of the transmission system, well knowing that no critical operation conditions in the distribution grid must occur by industrial redispatch measures, well knowing that no critical op-eration conditions in the distribution grid have to occur by industrial redispatch measures and consequently it can be expected that in future also on distribution levels congestions are going to be managed by redispatch. Currently, in most cases flexibility from generation units is utilized for redispatch. The regulatory framework and the incentives are currently not attracting industrial customers to participate in redispatch and the available capability to shift power is small compared to current redispatch needs.
At the same time, the producing industry faces challenges such as achieving energy efficiency targets and adapting to the changing energy market. The cur-rent situation shows that a highly dynamic industrial plant operation is often not possible due to a lack of algorithms combining industrial process optimization with automated participation algorithms in the congestion management
Goals and level of innovation compared to the state of the art: The primary goal of I4RD is to enable flexibility provision from the demand and supply-side at distribution network level for redispatch. The project will assess all necessary technical, regulatory, economic and organisational requirements for the imple-mentation of redispatch requirements, necessary interaction and optimiza-tion/control between TSO (transmission system operator) and DSOs (distribu-tion grid operators). I4RD is the first project in Austria bringing all relevant stakeholders together to provide a global solution through the automation and optimization of the industry, setting up a coordination process between the TSO and the DSOs, developing a novel redispatch module based on standardized requirements and demonstrating the value of the new approach through the proof-of-concept. In this way, I4RD will integrate untapped flexibility from indus-trial customers for the redispatch provision while observing DSO requirements.
Expected results and findings: I4RD will develop redispatch service and pro-cesses and related tools for the exchange of technical restrictions between the DSOs and the TSO. In addition, I4RD will set up industrial demonstrators/virtual power plants (VPPs) at distribution system level to efficiently address industrial customers with control systems with different levels of maturity and lay the groundwork for the future engagement of different industrial sectors and flexi-bility volumes. A cost-benefit analyses determines the distribution of costs and benefits among the stakeholder groups. A scalability analysis for TSO-DSO in-teraction identifies the impact on the distribution system caused by large-scale demand and supply-side management for redispatch in the transmission sys-tem and required information flows between TSO and DSO. Finally, a guideline is provided including a step-by-step tutorial for transforming a conventional ex-isting industrial energy supply system into a more flexible, more decarbonized, optimally operated one as well as the guidelines for the TSO-DSO coordination process.
