New business opportunities on local flexibility markets for DSOs

At the expert panel forum "New Applications in a New Electricity World”, Dr. Christoph Gutschi, Senior Project Manager at CyberGrid, presented solutions for Distribution System Operators (DSOs) on how to improve flexibility provision when interacting with this market players. E-control, the Austrian energy regulator that hosted the event, invited experts from the European energy industry to discuss the most recent technological developments for a greener and more sustainable energy supply.

In his presentation, Christoph Gutschi addressed the challenges with local flexibility markets for DSOs. He also suggested alternative approaches such as the use of traffic light systems to maintain control of balance service providers in the grid, as highlighted in CyberGrid's work on the InteGrid H2020 project. Furthermore, he stressed that reduced connection fees could be offered to new flexible customers.

The energy transition requires infrastructure that is supportive of renewable energies, therefore, existing energy assets should be enhanced and used in a more efficient way. Christoph Gutschi's presentation proposed market strategies on how to explore the opportunities of extended use of existing infrastructure and how to achieve added value for DSOs' infrastructure through monitoring and switching services as well as data hub services.

"Smart technologies like CyberNoc Flexibility Management Platform give rise to new business models to be offered by DSOs while they can also use their investment in infrastructure more efficiently.", stated Christoph Gutschi.

Finally, he encouraged the audience to rethink peak load charges by highlighting CyberGrid's experience in the H2020 Magnitude project. The Magnitude project has shown that the current schemes of network tariffs and Renewable Energy Sources (RES) support discourage the provision of flexibility services by the commercial and industrial sectors due to risks of increasing peak load charges. Amongst other aims, Magnitude is designed to develop technical solutions, market design, and business models for multi-energy systems, to increase flexibility provision for supporting renewable integration.