Progress in the development of a digital twin of the Low Voltage network for flexibility services

Barcelona, January 20 2023 – Last August 2022 the companies Ingelectus, Cuerva, Bamboo Energy together with Smart City Clúster  started the second phase of the DT4Flex project for the development of a digital twin of the distribution network to manage flexibility services for the resolution of technical problems in the network, supported by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade within the framework of the Extraordinary Call for Aid to Innovative Business Groups 2022 (AEI), from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

A project that reflects the objectives of Smart City Cluster, among which is the promotion of public-private cooperation to increase the competitiveness of its members as industry leaders in smart cities. In this sense, Smart City Cluster executes another 16 initiatives and 4 intercluster projects within the framework of the call for Innovative Business Groups for a value of 4.2 million euros. The Cluster’s commitment to the R&D&I solutions of its members is one of the key lines, promoting cooperation between companies, and DT4Flex is an example of this.

The main objective of the “DT4Flex – Low Voltage Digital Twin for flexibility services” project is the development of a tool that is able to predict the short-term events that the Low Voltage network will present and evaluate the availability of flexibility services to solve those problems derived from such events, thus maximizing the safe penetration of new agents.

During the first phase of the project, given the importance that the ability to operate Low Voltage networks is acquiring and with the aim of ensuring the resilience of the same and the continuity of supply of the population (maximizing the integration of new connections), Ingelectus has worked on the development of a novel solution that provides the DSO with tools with which it can technically operate the distribution networks. Thus, and with the idea that the DSO plays a role like that of the TSO in the transmission network, we have researched and developed a tool that allows the distributor to locate its needs and quantify the optimal flexibility service that solves them.

This phase has been validated in a limited area of the Cuerva Living Lab, based on a real infrastructure and population, with high resolution data accessed in near real time. This test environment includes Advanced Supervisory Medium and Low Voltage meters, a complete Smart Metering deployment and distributed solar generation monitoring, as well as agents that can provide energy flexibility such as batteries or electric vehicle charging stations.

The tests during the first phase have focused on the reduction of overvoltage events and saturation events of sections, as well as on the maximization of photovoltaic penetration in the grid described in the previous paragraph. The results obtained have been very satisfactory, not only demonstrating the possibility of avoiding incidents by minimizing the flexible contribution in the grid, but also helping to characterize, based on real tests, the future needs of flexible availability in the grid and to protocolize the connection of photovoltaic installations in critical grids, such as low voltage grids.

Continuing with the execution of the project, a second phase has been planned with the aim of achieving more ambitious objectives. These objectives will focus on extending the tests to a wider scope within the Cuerva’s Living Lab, thus increasing the diversity of incidents, the type of network and the Flexibility Service Providers. In addition, together with Bamboo Energy, the figure of the Demand Aggregator will be incorporated to evaluate the solution in more realistic scenarios in future local flexibility markets.