D.1.3 Pilot specific demonstration scenarios

Executive Summary

 

The REACT project aims to tackle existing barriers in the traditional electrical energy model on geographical islands, as they are highly dependent on the mainland energy market; moreover, transport and distribution lines are often inefficient and costly. REACT focuses on solving this problem by enabling geographical islands energy independence through a highly efficient renewable energy sources (RES) solution that will enable the RES penetration and its exploitation by integrating RES technologies available on the pilot islands (community assets) with those from the consortium technology providers. To do so, REACT will deliver a scalable and adaptable cloud-based ICT platform integrating algorithms to plan and manage the RES and storage assets by developing a holistic cooperative energy management and demand response (DR) system at community level on geographical islands.

The REACT project will be carried out in three pilot islands:

•   La Graciosa (Spain): a volcanic island in the Canary Islands with a population of about 700. The focus area of project demonstration is Caleta del Sebo, the biggest settlement in the island.

•   San Pietro (Italy): an island located in the Southwestern Coast of Sardinia. With a much bigger population (around 6,000), the focus area of project demonstration is Carloforte, the most concentrated population area of the island.

•   Inis Mór (Ireland): one of the Aran Islands, a set of 3 islands located in the West Coast of Ireland. With a total population over 770, the focus area of the project demonstration is Kilronan (Inis Mór), where the weather is significantly lower than the other pilot islands.

Regarding the Spanish pilot site – La Graciosa (Spain) – out of 41 targeted public/community and private buildings that have already been surveyed, the Consortium plans to deploy different technology configurations (7 in total) in 20 of them, as 2 of them do already have PV equipment in place.

Considering the roles of the different stakeholders that participate in the generation, transport and distribution and final energy consumption process, as well as the technical characterization from eligible buildings to be considered as part of the demonstration scenarios/use cases, many suitable demonstration scenarios/use cases have been considered. The planned technology implementation in La Graciosa is based on self-consumption though PV generation and BESS in dwellings, community buildings and any other facilities either being public or private. One of the main goals of La Graciosa’s pilot focus areas is to optimize this dispatch by complementing the REACT project solution with the grid (either using RES systems or the grid to cover energy demand and charging/discharging regarding price schemes and lowering GHG emissions), focusing on reducing the island’s dependency on the transferred energy from Lanzarote. The outlined examples of energy model simulation results show self-consumption quotas ranging from 86% to 98.5% while self-sufficiency quotas range from 32.7% to 87.1%.

Regarding the envisaged DR strategy in La Graciosa, those technology configurations are meant to match with DR strategies and DR concrete actions, allowing an optimal, effective and efficient energy dispatching to match RES generation with eligible buildings’ energy consumption. In this sense, two high-level DR groups have been considered:

•   Intra-day planned optimized energy dispatching inferred using the REACT control loop and executed by manipulating setpoints of low-level control algorithms for individual assets, including: energy storage optimization, local renewable generation use, making use of variable energy prices, responding to custom demand increase/decrease requests (slow response time) or utilization of end user electric load flexibility;

•   Intra-hour autonomous asset control for “fast DR”, including: grid supportive services, system compatible and system supportive services (facilitating ancillary services).

  Regarding the Italian pilot site – San Pietro (Italy) – out of 29 targeted public/community and private buildings that have already been surveyed (including private dwellings and condominiums so that the total amount of targeted households/entities is up to 36), the Consortium plans to deploy different technology configurations (6 in total) in 24 of them (including condominiums so that the final amount of targeted households/entities is up to 30). Some of them do already have PV or BESS equipment in place.

  Following previous methodology as in the case of La Graciosa, many suitable demonstration scenarios/use cases have been considered. The planned technology implementation in San Pietro is based on self-consumption trough PV generation and BESS in dwellings, community buildings and any other facilities either being public or private. In that case, this also includes heat pumps to supply necessary heating and cooling in eligible buildings. One of the main goals of San Pietro’s pilot focus areas is to optimize this dispatch by integrating the REACT.

project solution with existing RES generation via PV-wind power plant NASCA (999 kWp photovoltaic plant and 960 kWp wind farm, this last one disabled at the moment). To pursue the aims of the REACT project, the proposed solution is to adopt smart grid technologies and transform the Pilot Energy Community into a “Virtual Power Plant”, enabling the different functionalities of the energy system (e.g. prosumer, grid balancing, congestion) otherwise blocked under the current regulation. The Virtual Power Plant (VPP) integrated into the smart REACT platform allows to aggregate distributed energy resources into a coordinated and managed portfolio, acting as a single large entity similar to a conventional power plant, allowing better integration of distributed generation into the existing centralized energy system. For instance, the VPP can schedule energy consumption by charging electric vehicles, by operating the heat pump or storage systems when power generation is at maximum or allow access to distributed renewable energy generated by individual aggregated prosumers when the system needs additional electricity.

The outlined examples of energy model simulation results show the benefits of coupling PV generation, BESS and HP. While in a PV-only technology configuration the surplus generation ranges from approximately 120 to 320 kWh each month at maximum, adding BESS increases the surplus generation (thus the flexibility of the RES generation) up to approximately 450 kWh at maximum. The use of BESS also increases the number of months where there is no need of utility grid’s electricity. When speaking of HP, the initial site survey has revealed that HP technology is already widely deployed at the San Pietro demo site, in the form of air- conditioning systems providing space cooling and heating. The existing systems range from several small room air conditioners in the residential buildings to large commercial VRF (variable refrigerant flow) systems. The HP technology deployment at the San Pietro site will include several new installations, as well as replacement of some the older existing systems to enable communication with the REACT platform. For the majority of the new HP systems, communication with the REACT platform will be based on the Mitsubishi Electric MELCloud, a cloud-based solution which allows a wider range of monitoring and control functionality than the typical on/off or boost functions often included for smart grid applications.

Regarding the envisaged DR strategy in San Pietro, and considering that the energy infrastructure of San Pietro is somewhat more complex that is the case in La Graciosa, additional DR applications can be implemented on top of what was proposed for the Spanish island. The importance of maximizing self-consumption is much more impactful in this case given that the island has a considerable amount of local PV generation. Again two high-level DR groups have been considered:

•   Intra-day planned optimized energy dispatching inferred using the REACT control loop and executed by manipulating setpoints of low-level control algorithms for individual assets, including: energy storage optimization, Local renewable generation use, making use of variable energy prices, responding to custom demand increase/decrease requests (slow response time), utilization of end user thermal load flexibility and utilization of end user electric load flexibility;

•   Intra-hour autonomous asset control for “fast DR”, including: grid supportive services, system compatible and system supportive services (facilitating ancillary services).

Regarding the Irish pilot site – Inis Mór (Ireland) – out of 19 targeted public/community and private buildings that have already been surveyed, the Consortium plans to deploy two different technology configurations in 16 of them. Some of them do already have PV or BESS equipment in place (mainly the private buildings and dwellings).

Following previous methodology as in the case of La Graciosa and San Pietro, many suitable demonstration scenarios/use cases have been considered. One of the main goals of Inis Mór’s pilot focus areas is to optimize this dispatch by integrating the REACT project solution with existing RES generation, considering PV/solar thermal arrays. As it also happened in the other two pilot islands, Inis Mór is highly dependent from the power grid of the mainland due to the intermittent nature or RES generation, thus depending on the grid to ensure a stable and secure energy supply in the island. Therefore, the planned technology implementation in San Pietro is based on self-consumption trough PV generation and BESS in dwellings, community buildings and any other facilities either being public or private. A HP system will be deployed at Community Development Offices: in order to satisfy this building’s heating demand, renewable HP technology will also be deployed and set under the control strategy to maximally exploit available renewable energy generation in the pilot focus area. In this regard, electricity supply of air-source heat pumps will be matched with RES generation coming the PV plus BESS system. For the majority of existing HP systems (mainly the private buildings and dwellings), communication with the REACT platform will be based on the Mitsubishi Electric MELCloud. The outlined examples of energy model simulation results show PV self-consumption quotas ranging from 73.1% to 96.5% in public/community buildings (72.7% to 79.6% for private buildings and dwellings), while self-sufficiency quotas range from 28.4% to 65.6% in public/community buildings (almost 30% for private buildings and dwellings).

Regarding the envisaged DR strategy in Inis Mór, and in close collaboration with ESBN, potential optimization outcomes will be discussed and selected for implementation based on the desired effects on the MV distribution grid. The installations for this island, as opposed to the other REACT pilots where the assets are distributed in a larger number of individual installations, will be more focused on larger localized community buildings and several isolated minor houses. Following the distinction defined for the previous pilots, two different DR scheme groups with different response times are foreseen, as elaborated below.

•   Intra-day planned optimized energy dispatching inferred using the REACT control loop and executed by manipulating setpoints of low-level control algorithms for individual assets, including: energy storage optimization, local (legacy) renewable generation use, making use of variable energy prices, responding to custom demand increase/decrease requests (slow response time), utilization of end user thermal load flexibility, utilization of end user electric load flexibility;

•   Intra-hour autonomous asset control for “fast DR”, including: grid supportive services, system compatible and system supportive services (facilitating ancillary services).