High voltage direct current (HVDC), smart grids and storage are the three key enabling technologies for the future electricity system with high renewable energy sources (RES). In certain areas variable RES will soon completely dominate the power system, both in capacity, in energy and in market behaviour.
The program/challenges are as follows:
- Our focus is on this large scale (>50%) integration of variable RES into the power system by working on new projects on utility business models and other cooperation projects with the global technology and research team of Oil & Gas, and the Energy and Oil & Gas business areas on the hydrogen value chain.
- Storage is best characterized as a technology enabling or providing services to the grid and the market. We will continue our work through laboratory demonstration of imbalance mitigation and develop new validation methods for storage and demand response (advanced inverter functions, according to IEC 61850-90-7), and test and validate EU-developed solutions in projects such as Integrid.
- Due to the reduction of inertia (rotation mass) in the power system, protection and control of the whole system will be under pressure and needs re-thinking. This (technical) topic will become more prominent and we will write a technology brief, in cooperation with Technical University Delft, for branding purposes.
- On the hardware side, we will focus on HVDC Circuit Breaker testing through the EU funded PROMOTiON project. This will soon enable us to create a world-first reference on DC gas-insulated switchgear (GIS) testing for our KEMA Laboratories.
On the market and modelling side, we will concentrate on developing Recommended Practices for new markets, and flexibility and power quality services for network and system operators using the Universal Smart Energy Framework (USEF) as a basis.