TSCNET Services, the Munich-based Regional Security Coordinator, supports TSOs in keeping the world’s largest synchronous electrical grid stable.
24/7
Around the clock, every day of the year.
TSCNET Services is one of Europe’s leading Regional Security Coordinators (RSCs). The company based in Munich, the Bavarian capital in southern Germany, renders integrated services for power transmission system operators (TSOs) and their control centres to maintain the operational security of our electricity system – 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The complexity of Europe’s densely interconnected power grid is increasing at an enormous rate – more and more renewable energy, new production and transmission technologies and storage processes, and the predicted rise in e-mobility. New requirements are arising everywhere, but also additional opportunities. Together with our customers and partners, we develop the methods, processes and tools to meet the growing complexity and exploit our chances as society.
We ensure the safe and efficient use of grid capacities and coordinate countermeasures in the case of imminent bottlenecks or fluctuations in electricity production or consumption. This maximises availability of transmission capacity to market participants and, at the same time, minimises the risks of wide area events, such as brownouts or power failures, in view of the rapidly growing share of renewable energies with their difficult to forecast natural fluctuations. Together with our partners, we make the energy transition possible.
Close partnership with TSOs and RSCs
In accordance with the system operation guideline, adopted in May 2016 by the member states of the EU, each TSO is obliged to delegate a set of certain services to one of the European RSCs.
The TSCNET’s shareholders and main customers are the 14 TSOs of eleven European countries: 50Hertz (Germany), Amprion (Germany), APG (Austria), ČEPS (Czechia), ELES (Slovenia), HOPS (Croatia), MAVIR (Hungary), PSE (Poland), SEPS (Slovakia), Swissgrid (Switzerland), TenneT (Germany), TenneT (The Netherlands), Transelectrica (Romania), and TransnetBW (Germany). In addition, the TSOs of Denmark and Luxembourg, Energinet and Creos, trust in our services.
The TSOs continuously provide data that is processed with specially developed, highly complex programmes and analysed by our team of experienced experts from many different countries. The results form the basis for the TSOs’ decisions on network operation.
Through its electricity grid, the whole of Europe has long been united. Now the states of the EU want to work together to bring about the energy transition – a secure and reliable power supply for all with more and more renewable energy. As Regional Security Coordinator we play a key role in this process. Our claim names the most important aspects for our joint success: “Connect. Create. Coordinate.” We bring Europe’s TSOs together, develop new processes and solutions, and help align actions.
Comprehensive service portfolio
As a key service provider of the European electricity transmission network, we cooperate closely with ENTSO-E, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity, the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and its members, and the other RSCs: Coreso in Brussels (Belgium), the Nordic RSC in Copenhagen (Denmark), SCC in Belgrade (Serbia), and the Baltic RSC in Tallinn (Estonia). At the end of 2019, the TSOs from Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and Romania agreed to establish a new RSC in Thessaloniki, Greece.
The RSCs such as TSCNET Services are currently entrusted with a set of mandatory services for their customers according to EU legislation (see “Services“). We enable a coordinated analysis of the network-wide security situation and a forecast of the available transmission capacities. In addition, we provide the basis for joint planning of maintenance and repair work as well as measures for the expansion of the network infrastructure. Our services help our customers in their difficult task of reliably securing our energy supply, but at the same time are good for the citizens and good for the environment.
No one-size-fits-all-approach
In addition to the mandatory core services, we provide numerous additional services for our customers as and where required. In many cases, we also provide our customers with secure direct access to our databases as a reliable resource for their own calculations.
Our services are to be expanded and optimised as required in the future using a more detailed grid model and new security analyses methodology.
Our work is based on network codes drafted under the EU’s Third Energy Package. The codes are said to be the building blocks of the Internal Energy Market. They define the common standards and principles on the basis of which the RSCs and the TSOs cooperate.
Good counsel in close coordination
“Basically, we continuously monitor traffic – i.e. the operational status of the grids, current capacities, consumption and market data – and proactively determine at which points a congestion could occur. Whenever we forecast such a congestion, we provide timely recommendations in coordination with the TSOs on how the traffic can be redirected – like an alternative route.”
Uwe Zimmermann, Managing Director of TSCNET Services, in BDEW magazine “Zweitausend50”, July 2020