Event

ENTSO-E: Conference on the “System of Systems”

12.10.2020

Today the webinar or rather web conference series of the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) under the motto “Vision for the future of the power system” started. The online events with panel discussions focus on the upcoming challenges and opportunities for the European energy system up to 2030 – how can we best contribute to climate neutrality by 2050, how can we put the customer first, and how can we increase the flexibility of the transmission system? The series was kicked off by the two-hour video conference “ENTSO-E’s Vision 2030: major trends and developments”. The core message was clear and ultimately resonated through all the contributions: “We need a multi-layer, multi-player, cross-sector and cross-border coordination, cooperation and integration.”

The first webinar of the series started with an introductory speech by Laurent Schmitt, Secretary General of ENTSO-E. Among the other contributors were Joachim Balke, Head of Unit for Infrastructure and Regional Cooperation in the European Commission’s Directorate General for Energy, and Morten Petersen, Vice-Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy. Both high-ranking representatives of European energy policy gave keynote speeches. Mr Balke reported on “The Green Deal: Pathways to deliver on the European long-term ambitions”. He stressed the possible synergies and said that we would only be able to achieve our goals if we stopped hesitating and started now. Mr Petersen spoke about “Key milestones on the path to climate neutrality by 2050 and delivering the Green Deal”.

Radical changes ahead
The issues addressed in the other individual presentations related to the ENTSO-E visions of the energy future and dealt with project scenarios in the network development plans, system needs, and the main trends in the energy system identified by ENTSO-E. Dimitrios Chaniotis, Chair of the System Development Committee of ENTSO-E, also described the enormous savings potential for Europe, but also the “significant uptake of HVDC transmission” through the offshore development. Timothée Decroix, Chair of the Policy & Communication Expert Group of ENTSO-E, explained the close linkage between System Operations and Market Design. The system change would be more radical than most people were aware of today. Power transmission grids were of crucial importance, but they could not solve the major tasks ahead on their own.

Damian Cortinas, Vision 2030 Project Leader at ENTSO-E, then came to a kind of conclusion: a “System of Systems” had to be established jointly, in which the Regional Security Coordinators (RSCs) such as TSCNET Services were developed into Regional Coordination Centres (RCCs). The success of this system on would depend on four factors in particular: “resilience, forecasts, automation and artificial intelligence”.

Three stakeholder representatives brought various additional aspects to the discussion: Wendel Trio, Director of CAN Europe (Climate Action Network), Monique Goyens, Director General of the European consumer organisation BEUC, and Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, Secretary General of the industry association Hydrogen Europe. The open discussion that followed, with well over 20 contributions, was also very lively and highlighted many vastly different aspects. By the way, five more ENTSO-E webinars are scheduled in the next two days – it’s worth taking part.

ENTSO-E is hosting a webinar on the future development of the European power system

Linkup
> Open ENTSO-E webinar series webpage (html)

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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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ElSeC 2017 slide decks and videos online

13.11.2017

“It was an inspiring and perfectly organised conference with interesting talks on a sunny day in a beautiful city,” wrote one of the participants about ElSeC 2017, hosted by TSCNET Services and co-organised by ENTSO-E, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity. A big thanks for all the attendees, speakers, and helpers for making the event unique.

If you didn’t have the chance to be at the first European Conference on Electricity Security Coordination on the 17th of October in Munich or if you attended the event but missed a presentation you wish you hadn’t, well, here you are: Video recordings and presenter slide decks from ElSeC are now available. That also goes for the Panel Discussion. You can download every slide deck in PDF form. Follow the link below for free access to all videos and slides.

> Visit ElSeC 2017 post-conference webpage (html)

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Open evening at TSCNET premises

17.10.2017

Today, TSCNET Services is the proud host of ElSeC 2017, the Conference on Electricity Security Coordination, in Munich, Germany. On the eve of the conference we had invited registrated participants to an open evening at TSCNET’s office facilities east of the Munich city centre. The event was attended by more than 70 people, among them high-ranking representatives of European transmission system operators (TSOs), security initiatives as well as regulatory and political authorities. The welcome speech was held by TSCNET’s parting Managing Director Siem Bruijns, who used the occasion to introduce his successors as managing directors, Maik Neubauer und Uwe Zimmermann.

At the premises, the guests of TSCNET could experience the workflows of a Regional Security Coordinator (RSC) in a direct manner. They were even given the opportunity to visit the Operator Room to gain an overview of the operational services and to witness a complete so-called DOPT, the Daily Operational Planning Teleconference bringing together experts of all the TSOs.

Videos including the brand-new corporate video and presentations on services and tools gave additional insight into the business of TSCNET, as did the staff members, who were always willing to give profound information. Guests could also give proof of their patience and their hand-eye coordination with a huge, handcrafted hot wire in the form of the company’s name. The enjoyable evening used for new professional acquaintances and inspiring conversations, was rounded up by captivating live music, drinks, and a flying buffet.

> Visit Open Evening picture gallery (Flickr, html)
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Impressions from the TSCNET Services Open Evening on the eve of ElSeC 2017

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