Terna, the company that manages the Italian electricity grid, is participating in an international project for infrastructure flexibility. The partners involved are the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland and the operation consists of a new platform based on Blockchain technology, which will facilitate the inclusion of small distributed energy resources in the electricity grid balancing process. Together with Terna there are TenneT and Swissgrid and the name of the platform is Equigy, intended to support companies – starting with Terna – in their mission of guaranteeing an increasingly safe, efficient and sustainable electricity grid; and with the ultimate goal of facilitating the ongoing energy transition, in line with the role of the Transmission System Operator as a neutral facilitator.
The platform will not only connect distributed resources to the provision of dispatching services, such as electric vehicles or residential storage units, but will also involve other stakeholders in the supply chain such as aggregators and Original Equipment Manufacturers, allowing for extended enablement of new flexibility resources in support of the Electricity System, with a view to scalability and standardization of processes by the major European TSOs. In an increasingly integrated and complex electricity system, Equigy represents, in fact, an intersectoral effort aimed at establishing a new European standard for flexibility markets by breaking down the barriers, especially economic ones, which have so far hindered the participation of non-traditional resources.
The platform will first be launched in the four markets mentioned (Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland), to then be extended to other countries as well, such as Denmark where the TSO Energinet has already expressed its interest in joining. The technology and software will be provided free of charge and will be open sourced to encourage the development of secondary applications along the energy value chain. The system is not exclusive and it will be up to the aggregator to decide whether or not to use the services of the platform. The TSOs are engaging in this activity without any commercial interest and with the sole purpose of facilitating the inclusion of distributed energy resources, supporting the transformation towards a "neutral" electricity system from a climate point of view.
