Market-Based Flexibility Services for Congestion Management

According to the European Clean Energy Package (2019) 
Distribution System Operators (DSOs) shall effectively use 
flexibility services from local and regional assets to safely 
host more renewable energy sources in the electricity grid. 
Electricity prosumers become crucial players due to their 
potential to provide flexibility by adapting their 
production and consumption behaviour. Yet, integrating 
new types of assets into the distribution grid to use 
flexibility creates complexity and hardly predictable 
power flows in the distribution networks. The European 
H2020 demonstration project EUniversal aims to 
overcome the existing limitations in the use of flexibility. 
For that purpose, smart grid tools for grid state 
assessment and active system management are developed. 
A demonstration pilot is set up to test the flexibility value 
chain from congestion detection to market-based flexibility 
procurement via a local flexibility market. The pilot is 
conducted in the LV grids of the German DSO MITNETZ 
STROM, examining the use of flexible resources in the LV 
grid for congestion management. The article describes the 
set-up of the flexibility value chain and shows how all 
individual parts are integrated into the complete process