TSOs 50Hertz of Germany and Energinet of Demark Lead International Council on the Control Room of the Future

The members of G-PST’s Implementation Council for the Control Room of the Future met for their kickoff un- der the leadership of 50Hertz and Energinet in Copenhagen the beginning of June. The representatives came from TSOs around the world as well as from academia and discussed how to speed up research and innova- tion. The objective: to bring findings more quickly into operational use and ultimately speed up the energy transition. As a take-away, 50Hertz’ Product Cluster Grid, Asset & System together with Energint decided to launch a research challenge with manageable tasks and to provide tangible resources to the researchers to deliver results within a year.

“The ultimate goal of the Research Challenge is to reduce the time from R&D to oper- ations. With increasing amounts of RE that needs to be integrated into our grids, we face new challenges that calls for new solutions. We believe, that by bringing to- gether system operators and researchers, we can accelerate this transition.”
Jesper Nielsen, Vice President of Digital Products and Business Development at Energinet

The Global Power System Transformation Consortium (G-PST) unites system operators and key players in the en- ergy sector around the globe. The organization and its members work towards the goal to accelerate the transition to low emission and low cost, secure, and reliable power systems. Members come from all continents. TSO Energinet of Denmark is one of the founding members of G-PST. Elia Group is represented at G-PST through 50Hertz.

“The Research Challenge for Innovation in Power Systems is a strong commitment from Elia and further leading TSOs to acknowledge the importance and necessities of research initiatives. We will collaborate with research partners without compromise and provide resources such as knowledge, staff, and funds to produce results for the control room within a year.”
Mirco Pracht, Product Director Grid, Asset & System and Lead Digitization System Control

Mirko Pracht, Product Director at Elia Group / 50Hertz and Jesper Nielsen VP of Digital Products and Business Development at Energinet Denmark co-chair G-PST’s Council on the Control Room of the Future. Adrian Kelly of EPRI – a research institution focusing on the energy transition – presented G-PST’s 17 research questions on the control room of the future. Consequently, representatives from TSOs such as CAISO from California, Eirgrid from Irland, TransnetBW from Germany, and Australia's AEMO met with representatives from academia like London’s Imperial College and Johns Hopkins University from the US to exchange on how to speed up innovation and research processes. Why? It is necessary to accelerate the application of research findings in the real-world within the control room and to do so, to change the dynamics and mindset of interaction between research, industry, and suppliers.

The council agreed: the most important and pressing questions for the industry are well known. However, the cooperation dynamics between research/academia and industry don’t fit the current need and speed triggered through the energy transition. Research tenders’ volumes are generally too large, and the questions asked are too complex. This in turn leads to multi-year long research projects, time the industry simply doesn’t have. Often enough, on top of that, the industry is not providing the necessary resources for a speedy solution, such as data, real-life projects, experts or test environments.

“The real power and strength of the G-PST is illustrated through the work of the im- plementation councils.  By bringing together leading system operators with like- minded researchers, software developers and product suppliers working toward a common purpose, the pace of change can be greatly accelerated. The visionary leadership of Elia through 50 Hertz, and Energinet, is a critical ingredient for success.”
Charlie Smith, IEEE Life Fellow / Principal Consultant at ESIG

50Hertz and Energinet intend to end that with the new „Research Challenge for Innovation in Power Systems”. This challenge will limit the scope of the tender while simultaneously provide the necessary resources the research partners need. The objective is to help research partners to produce tangible results, i.e. applicable within the control room, within a year.