RSC Conference 2019: Rush to Copenhagen

08.10.2019

The weather turned out typically Nordic with quite stormy wind and some rain, but otherwise host Nordic RSC could be more than happy about a great success and a fruitful gathering of our industry – about 250 participants from all over Europe came to the third “RSC Conference” today in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. The event was staged by Nordic RSC at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, located in the Copenhagen Towers, which also house the offices of the Regional Security Coordinator (RSC) of the power transmission system operators (TSOs) of Denmark (TSCNET shareholder Energinet), Finland (Fingrid), Norway (Statnett), and Sweden (Svenska Kraftnät).

One of the key sentences fell quite early: “Nobody knows the future, but it will be electric!” In the European energy system that is already interconnected and will become even more so in future, coordination of cross-border electricity flows is one of the most crucial tasks for TSOs. To a large extent, this task is performed by Europe’s RSCs, with Coreso (based in Brussels) and TSCNET Services (Munich) as pioneers from 2013 onwards. In 2015, SCC for south eastern Europe followed in Belgrade and in 2016, Baltic RSC as well as Nordic RSC were established.

A good idea becomes a tradition
The RSCs have been holding conferences on system security since 2017, co-organised by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E). TSCNET hosted the first RSC conference entitled “ElSeC” (Electricity Security Coordination) in Munich and one year later Coreso invited to “Power Coordination Europe” in Brussels.

The motto of “RSC 2019” was “Act locally, coordinate regionally, think European”. The event resulted in a closing speech by the CEO of the Finnish TSO Fingrid, Jukka Ruusunen, discussing how RSCs support efficient markets that in turn support security of supply. This core discussion was complemented by other general panel discussions and also by parallel, partly interactive sessions to cover as many interesting and relevant topics as possible. The topics were, for instance, “The Green Transition: The reason for change and innovation in TSOs”, “Ensuring the right competences in an RSC perspective”, “Critical Grid Situation Communication”, “Regional adequacy forecasting” or “Balancing projects and reserve sizing”. The key speakers came from the industry, EU institutions, markets and civil society.

Thomas Egebo, CEO of TSCNET shareholder Energinet, the Danish TSO, welcomed the participants and illustrated the importance of the regions using the example of the Nordic region. The ENTSO-E strategy paper on “Enhanced TSO coordination for Europe” was presented by Joachim Vanzetta, Director System Control at the German TSO and TSCNET shareholder Amprion and Chair of the ENTSO-E Board. Eryk Kłossowski, CEO of the Polish TSO PSE, and Ben Voorhorst, COO of the Dutch-German TSO TenneT – both are TSCNET shareholders – participated together with colleagues from further TSOs in the general discussion: “TSO regional cooperation and establishment of RCCs – learning from best practices”. This discussion was moderated by Laurent Schmitt, the Secretary-General of ENTSO-E.

Increasingly complex with rapidly rising requirements
Maik Neubauer, one of the two Managing Directors of TSCNET Services, held a presentation on “RSC complexities and future challenges”, focusing on the intricacy of the challenges faced by RSCs in the continuous implementation of services, in RSC collaboration and in the adaptation and integration of requirements from the EU “Clean Energy for all Europeans Package” (CEP).

On the conference website, all speeches and discussions were broadcast via live stream. Soon all presentations will be available for download as well as numerous photos from the event. All good things come in threes, as the saying goes. The third edition of the RSC Conference was indeed great, but we are all the more looking forward to next year.

Around 250 participants attended this year’s RSC Conference on 8 October in Denmark’s capital Copenhagen

Linkup
> Visit RSC Conference 2019 webpage, with videos (html)
> See conference picture gallery (Flickr, html)

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PowerCoordinationEurope – ElSeC 2018 held in Brussels

17.10.2018

Exactly one year ago today TSCNET Services in cooperation with the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) hosted the first Conference on Electricity Security Coordination (ElSeC) in Munich. Yesterday this year’s edition took place in Brussels, Belgium, under the title #PowerCoordinationEurope. The event was organised by ENTSO-E and Coreso, the Regional Security Coordinator (RSC) for Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, in partnership with the Florence School of Regulation (FSR). The event is said to “be a unique opportunity to explore the European electricity ‘stellar system’ with its local, national, regional and European dimensions – its market, operations, planning and innovation galaxies with IT as a vehicle for connecting the dots between them”.

In the course of the conference, the so-called Clean Energy Package was repeatedly discussed – with interesting contributions. Miguel Arias Cañete, European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy, reiterated his expectation that the “decarbonisation of the power sector will be faster than anticipated”. We from TSCNET Services were also present. Uwe Zimmermann, one of the two Managing Directors, took part in the panel discussion on “A journey across Europe: RSC services and regional specificities”, also covering the needed level of interoperability between the RSCs.

The second Managing Director, Maik Neubauer, was one of the panelists at the session “Digital: enabling power coordination” discussing the impacts of digitalisation and analytical intelligence on grid management and European energy markets, but also aspects like cybersecurity for grid data. Together with Laurent Schmitt, General Secretary of ENTSO-E, and FSR Director Jean-Michel Glachant, he discussed the complexity topics of managing the security in the European power grid, based on rapidly evolving technologies.
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Pictures from ElSeC 2018 #PowerCoordinationEurope (pictures by Coreso)

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The ElSeC 2018 video by Coreso presenting all five Regional Security Coordinators (RSCs) in Europe (Munich and TSCNET Services from minute 5:30)

ElSeC 2018, called #PowerCoordinationEurope, by Coreso in cooperation with ENTSO-E and The Florence School of Regulation was held in Brussels

Linkup
> See ElSeC 2018 PowerCoordinationEurope programme (html)
> See ElSeC 2018 PowerCoordinationEurope list of speakers (html)

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Member of the European Parliament visits TSCNET

08.09.2017

Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Latvia and former Minister for Economics of Latvia, has visited TSCNET Services. Kariņš is a part of the conservative European People’s Party parliamentary group. The American-born entrepreneur and politician is a member of the EP’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy and was accompanied by his advisor Edijs Ostrovskis, also coming from Latvia.

Alexander Küster, Head of TSCNET’s Operations Team, and Emanuel Kofler, Organisational Development Manager at TSCNET, welcomed the guests at the company’s premises in Munich, Germany, where they talked about the growth of the company and its range of services for transmission system operators (TSOs). They outlined how Regional Security Coordinators (RSCs) such as TSCNET have established a higher standard of security of supply in Europe and significantly improved the cooperation between TSOs over the last years. In this context, they also debated on ElSeC 2017, the first European Conference on Electricity Security Coordination hosted by TSCNET and co-organised by ENTSO-E, the European Network of TSOs for Electricity, on the 17th of October. This visit was a great honour and a valuable opportunity to debate on Europe’s power grid at present and future developments.

> See Krišjānis Kariņš MEP page (html)

Picture: TSCNET Services / Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš (second from left) / Edijs Ostrovskis (on the left side)

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