Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to the EU Energy Projects Podcast, a podcast series from Enlida and France focusing on the clean energy transition for the European Union and the EU Commission funded energy projects that will help us achieve it.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Welcome to this episode of the EU Energy Project podcast and today I'm joined by Tommy Medved, Head of the Laboratory for Energy Policy at the University of Ljubljana and coordinator of the STREAM project.
Welcome Tommy and thank you for joining us today.
[00:00:46] Speaker C: Thank you for the invitation, Jonathan.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Okay, what if you could please start with a brief description, background and overview of the STREAM project.
[00:00:56] Speaker C: Just in short, STREAM is a project where we try to establish and define the ecosystem of flexibility provision that would enable the small scale flexibility sources on the low voltage side of the grid to basically act access the markets and monetize their flexibility.
That's in short.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: And why does flexibility matter then in. In this shift to renewable energy?
[00:01:31] Speaker C: It matters for a lot of reasons, but my personal, I'll just say the biggest reason that I see my personal opinion is that we won't be able to make transition without flexibility because we won't be able to change all the power lines and change the infrastructure that fast and it would be too costly and too time consuming if we want to upgrade the capacities to capacity of the grid to enable charging of EV cars all at once to have operation of PV all the time without batteries and flexibility.
So basically just the share physical limitations cannot be overcome without flexibility due to the. I would say the one more time due to the technical constraints and due to the economic constraints.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: And then there are a variety of devices like EV chargers, heat pump pumps, batteries and. And how can these support the grid?
[00:02:42] Speaker C: Yeah, well I would say, I think that we are all, all the people in energy world I would say would say the holy grail for the future for the energy are the batteries of course.
Why? Because they are stationary and they are there to basically they can either consume or consume the excess energy or give the energy when it's needed. But there's also a lot of let's say flexibility potential in electric cars which are again basically batteries on wheels.
And it's really important that we enable this flexibility the to the price signals or to the grid signals to be activated. And how they can basically support the operation of the grid is basically in balancing of the the power, let's put that way and the frequency when there's an excess energy you need to reduce it or save it. And you can also do the reducement with pv. You know, you can turn off the the PV when there's Too much sun.
I can all. I always say you cannot have.
We have the discussions a lot of times there's too much PV, there's too much energy in the system, etc. Etc. And I say, you know what's the thing is about what the best thing about energy is. You cannot have it too much.
It's like with money, you cannot have it too much.
If you have it too much, then you can reduce it. It's easier to reduce than to find the missing one. Yeah, you always have. The same thing is with, with the, with money you have problem if you have too much money and when you have too little money. But the problems when you have too little money are much worse than when you have too much money.
And the same teams, the same thing goes for the energy. When the Spain blackout happened, I said it multiple times, it's a good thing that it happened because of too much energy and not because of lack of energy. Because now you're seeing it. What happens when you have a lack of oil and gas?
Are we happy with that or should we, or would we be happier if there would be too many. Too much of oil and gas in that sense.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: But I mean, I think we'll come to it a little bit later. But do you have a feel for what sort of critical mass of these devices to deliver worthwhile, valuable flexibility in.
Because you know, things like EVs, they're all fairly new and there aren't huge numbers of them around necessarily.
[00:05:25] Speaker C: I. No. The thing is that with ev, of course the adaption now, like it will happen, it's happening now even.
I'm talking to my friends from, from car industry and they said, you know, what was the best commercial for, for EVs now that the sales are booming in Europe again? I said the Trump administration, Trump did much more for the EV adaption than all the European policies so far. In that sense, it's a little bit, let's say over exaggerating, but I think that critical masses will come and they're already coming.
They're already here in some places. For example, with batteries in Slovenia, 80 to 100% of AFR. So ancillary service needed for balancing is provided from batteries.
So. By batteries. Sorry, by batteries. And so the critical mass, and especially when I see, when I look at the, let's say utility scale developments is becoming huge now. The small scale is just.
Is up and coming and in Slovenia it's picking up the residential batteries. And also around Europe, the EVs for sure will come in the next few years to the critical mass where they will matter a lot.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: And
[00:06:46] Speaker C: it's always unfair to predict the future, when will it happen. But I would say that we will see the big boom in the next two, three years for sure. At least with batteries.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Okay, so what then is Stream's approach to enabling these devices to deliver flexibility?
[00:07:07] Speaker C: Yeah, the Stream approach, like I said at the beginning. So the ecosystem, the flexibility ecosystem defined all the necessary, it's like a framework or it defined all the building blocks in regard which should be there to enable flexibility to be utilized. It goes from data gathering because without data you're just man with the opinion. Yeah. And so the data is the, let's say the first step that you need to collect and have, then you put it to the aggregator, then the aggregator also can go and utilize this on local markets or on the wholesale markets. Okay, those are the standard things.
But one very big thing like missing point that was missing in all of these discussions that we had for many years before was the so called device registry that we envisioned.
And this device registry is, as I said before, without data, you're just man with opinion.
On a lot of conferences and a lot of talks, a lot of projects, they were always saying flexibility will solve, but at etc. And there was, I always ask the question, tell me where is this flexibility and how much of those is really there? Nobody had a answer.
And to have this answer you would need to have a device registry.
And we envisioned that even before and then, I mean when the project started or with the proposal already at that time, where we said the device registry will be crucial for adoption of small scale flexibility assets.
Why?
Because you need to know where it is, you need to know. So if you want to say they will participate, they will participate at the local markets. You need to know which devices can actually participate, how big they are, who are they operated by, whom. And then of course you also need to start having these measurements that you can prove that these devices actually did some change in that region, let's put that way.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: So the device registry then that's been developed in the Stream project.
So can you go into a little more detail about it?
[00:09:35] Speaker C: Yes, the device registry, basically we developed the prototype and we tested it, we defined all the functionalities, how, how it should operate, the technical specifications, what it should contain, and who should be the owner and the caretaker of it, etc. And it was tested how to say and in the project successfully.
But it's also interesting that I would say we were the visionaries, we thought let's say a year or two ahead of what the Europe was thinking. And now you also have it in the EU network code on demand response.
It says clearly that they need to establish the flexibility resources register.
So basically it's in the network code. It will happen all the national authorities so agencies will have to adopt it. Currently it's being in at the moment.
The entry into force was foreseen for first quarter of this year.
It's a little bit delayed but the national enforcement of this flexible device register will take most probably in 2007, 2008. Those are the current official plans. And yeah, I think this will come true. And also they said basically you have five, five categories of information that the flexible device register should cover. First of one is indification information. This is on asset location, including data for the grid and the primary ownership details, who owns this asset. Then pre qualification information.
So technical parameters that confirm the asset is eligible to provide the grid services.
Then deliverable flexibility, the exact capacity and response time that resource can offer.
Then contractual information agreements between aggregators, transmission system operators and distribution system operators and the settlement related information which is metering data and baselines used to calculate the financial compensation for service rendered.
So I hope I got that, I explained it or given more information in enough details.
So for the listeners they can imagine what device registry is.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: We'll come back to that. And can you just talk a little bit more about the pilots, where the pilots are taking place and the context of those?
[00:12:23] Speaker C: Yes, of course. So in stream we have four pilots, one in Spain, one in Italy, one in Slovenia and the last one in Finland. Let's put that way, each of the pilot tests different part of the ecosystem.
And the ecosystem, I would say it's divided in two in two ways or let's say in two parts.
First part is the technical part, let's say the technical innovation. And the second part is the market innovation.
And in Spain the the focus was on market innovation where we also have OMI as a market operator. They defined and they they develop more their market, the local market. Also in Slovenia we did develop our market platform for testing how it should and how it should collaborate. The DSO TSO Corporation in Slovenia we also tested this device registry, how it should perform and connect the devices to it.
Then in Spain and then in Finland the focus was more on technical integration of the data, where to get the data, how to use it as much as possible.
And they were able to achieve participation on FCR market with a small scale flexibility which is incredible. But they did really a lot of work. Our partners Optivati from NVTT from Finland on basically the whole data structure, how much data you need to save because. And data retention because when you have vast number of or vast size of data, storing it, storing all the data is not efficient and you don't need to store it, but then you need to see which data is important, how long do you need to keep it, which data you need to keep forever, etc. So we did a lot of work on that.
And yeah, they also put some. I think they, I hope they already managed. I don't have the latest news but I know that they submitted one patent on this.
And yeah, and then we have also an Italian pilot side where they also dealt more on technical stuff of how they could use the flexibility for water from water pumps and immobility.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: And when you're involving consumers, you know, small scale providers in flexibility, what challenges have been been experienced around that?
[00:15:11] Speaker C: Yeah, well, the first thing is the user comfort. People are not that flexible in that sense at the moment and you need to try to have it.
That's why we did, we focused a lot on this user acceptance and also designing the products in, we call it user centric design.
So that we ask them what they would like, what they like and what they don't like. Also more, even more important, not just what they like, but more important is what they don't like. So user comfort was one of the biggest issues, especially with households, but with industry, we all think industry is very flexible, etc. But it is flexible, I must say it is.
But there's also a question of every business owner has its own calculation on how much does this flexibility cost.
If it's worth it for him to stop the production or change the pattern of production or the time scheduling.
Because if you don't remunerate, if the remuneration is not high enough to cover his losses and give him some added benefits, they won't do it. And this is a little bit tricky now regarding this.
So I would say that even though we have a lot of potential, flexibility potential in industry, it's going to be really hard to, to get it. And the biggest one that we, the most successful we were, we were with those assets that are basically lying there for security of supply or for, let's say some aggregators that are there for the emergency cases. And of course now what's happening, a lot of utility, I mean not utility scale but let's say industrial scale batteries, those are the ones that are really going to push and going to be available because they won't affect the business as usual for them.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Just coming back to the the device registry plans for the future, what sort of model do you envisage? Is it going to be a central registry? Will it be national?
Or who, who, who will sort of own the registry, as it were?
[00:17:33] Speaker C: To be honest, I don't know. But in Stream project we envisioned two ways basically either is it central owned like from the market operator or from any. Or from national Energy Agency or who, whatever or maybe tso.
It can be centrally we design it like it can be done like central or it can be also orchestrated and basically in this decentralization in decentralized way that each of the DSOs could have it or any other markets or even better in a way if you design a platform in the cloud, then also you could ask the companies that are aggregators that are using these flexibilities that they need to send the data in in prescribed format to them. That's also an option because they, some of the companies, they already have all this data and pre qualification etc. And it could also be a mix. Then what will, what will be the final solution will depend on the national regulatory and the situation in each of the countries.
Then it's an open field.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: Okay, good. Well, super. Well, thank you very much. And on that note, I'd like to thank you for talking about this project which is clearly significant in advancing flexibility in Europe.
So thank you very much, Tommy.
[00:19:01] Speaker C: Thank you Jonathan and wish you all the best.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: You've been listening to the EU Energy Projects Podcast, a podcast brought to you by Enlit and Friends. You can find us on Spotify, Apple and the Enlit World website.
Just hit subscribe and you can access our other episodes too. I'm Aretit Daradimo. Thank you for joining us.
