TSCNET Services

Improved Coordination Solution implemented

09.11.2021

The power transmission system operators (TSOs) in the Core Capacity Calculation Region (Core CCR) are developing and implementing market integration solutions defined in European legislation. Further integration of the market is essential to the energy transition towards a carbon free energy system. It leads to more efficient use of the supply sources and infrastructure and enhances security of supply.

As part of this process on 1 November, the Improved Coordination Solution (ICS) process was launched by Core TSOs and RSCs (Regional Security Coordinators) such as TSCNET Services.

The ICS improves remedial actions coordination among the Core TSOs and RSCs during the Day-Ahead Security Analysis process. This process will allow us to better communicate and work together to prepare the future Coordinated Security Analysis (CSA) service implementation. It improves efficiency and enhances security of supply.

The implementation of ICS is an important milestone for Core TSOs and RSCs as it is the first regional coordination process implemented in the Core CCR.

The Core CCR consists of the bidding zone borders between the following EU member states’ bidding zones: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

First step taken to coordinate remedial actions in the Core CCR (picture: Walter Sturn, Unsplash)

Linkup
> See information on Core CCR (html)

See article on single page

New Managing Director for TSCNET Services

29.09.2020

The Shareholders’ Meeting of TSCNET Services GmbH has appointed Dieter Weiß as Managing Director of TSCNET at the proposal of the nomination committee. Weiß completes the management team and will manage the company together with Uwe Zimmermann. The primary task is the upcoming further development of the current Regional Security Coordinator (RSC) for the 14 shareholders from among the European power transmission system operators into a European Regional Coordination Centre (RCC); this transformation is prescribed by the 4th European Single Market Package (Clean Energy Package, CEP). Weiß will be responsible for the areas of organisation and administration from 15 October.

Weiß (born in 1972) was Head of Finance & Governance at the Baden-Württemberg transmission system operator TransnetBW until 2016. Most recently, he was a member of the Management Board of the investment fund company YIELCO Investments AG. “Mr. Weiß is a proven financial expert who will contribute his expertise and experience to the further development of the company and shape the transformation process in the interests of the shareholders,” ex-plains Dr. Rainer Pflaum, Chief Financial Officer of TransnetBW, in his function as Chairman of the TSCNET Supervisory Board. Zdeslav Čerina, Chairman of the Shareholders’ Meeting agrees: “Mr. Weiß was able to convince us as shareholders with his professional and personal profile to be the right person for the future orientation of the company.

Weiß succeeds Maik Neubauer, who is leaving the company at the end of September when his contract expires after three successful years of continuous growth.

Dieter Weiß fills the position of one of two Managing Directors of TSCNET Services

Linkup
> Open TSCNET press release (pdf, 119kb)

See article on single page

ENTSO-E pays tribute to the work done for IT tools

21.06.2020

As already reported in our news blog, the pan-European IT tools for Outage Planning Coordination (OPC) and Short-Term Adequacy (STA) are operational since the end of March and the end of May 2020, respectively. OPC and STA are services provided by Regional Security Coordinators (RSCs) and transmission system operators (TSOs) to increase the operational security of Europe’s power system. The OPC tool allows all five European RSCs and 38 TSOs to coordinate outage planning on a weekly basis, while the STA tool provides them with daily calculations based on generation and demand forecasts of all ENTSO-E member TSOs. These calculations help to identify possible adequacy deficiencies for the coming week.

The tools that now work are based on prototypes developed by the two major European RSCs out of the five. The pilot of the OPC tool was created by TSCNET Services in Munich, Germany, while the STA tool is based on a prototype of CORESO, based in Brussels. Both tools run on the ENTSO-E Communication and Connectivity Service Platform (ECCoSP) and demonstrate the continuing commitment and efforts of the entire TSO community: TSOs, RSCs, and ENTSO-E.

Tahir Kapetanovic, Head of the Control Centre of TSCNET shareholder APG, the Austrian TSO, and Chairman of the ENTSO-E System Operation Committee, considers cross-border coordination and intensive cooperation to be essential for the smooth functioning of the European power system. “Jointly developed pan-European IT tools such as the OPC and STA tools, allow uniform norms and standards for network operation to be put into practice.”

ENTSO-E appreciates the cooperation between RSCs and TSOs in the development of the pan-European IT tools for OPC and STA

Linkup
> See ENTSO-E press release (html)
> Watch ENTSO-E video on the OPC tool (YouTube)
> Watch ENTSO-E video on the STA tool (YouTube)

See article on single page

New IT tools for Europe-wide supply security

08.06.2020

The digitisation of grid operation is constantly increasing and requires continuous optimisation, e.g. in terms of outage planning coordination and adequacy analysis – both aspects are integral parts of the Annual Work Programme 2020 of the European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E). Two new IT tools to simplify the cooperation of transmission system operators (TSOs) and allow better anticipation of the balance between supply and demand are available since this spring and currently used by a total of 38 TSOs. Under the coordination of ENTSO-E, the “Outage Planning Coordination (OPC) Pan European Merge Tool” and “Short Term Adequacy forecast (STA) tool” have been developed jointly with the Munich based Regional Security Coordinator (RSC) TSCNET Services playing a leading role in the development of OPC.

Tahir Kapetanovic, Head of the Control Centre of TSCNET shareholder APG, the Austrian TSO, and Chairman of the ENTSO-E System Operation Committee, comments on the latest success: “The cross-border coordination and intensive cooperation of all national TSOs are the preconditions for a smooth functioning of the power supply across the European Union. By means of such jointly developed tools, uniform norms and standards for network operation can truly be implemented into practice.”

The launching of both tools may be considered as further evidence of the well-established pan-European cooperation of European TSOs and RSCs. STA enables a short to medium-term prognosis for load management, which is particularly important in view of the energy transition to compensate for the volatility of renewable power generation with innovative solutions and to integrate them smartly into the system. With the OPC Pan European Merge Tool, concept originally developed by TSCNET Services, the TSOs and RSCs can plan power outages on a regional level, including coordination of maintenance and inspections. Electricity supply and trade are thus ensured despite the necessary shutdowns.

The need for OPC on a pan-European level across the different RSCs and the corresponding concept of a harmonised outage planning process dates back to 2012, when the TSOs of the central and eastern European regions established the TSC (TSO Security Cooperation) area. The Medium-Long-Term Operational Planning (MLTOP) project of the TSC TSOs, which was started at that time, is the origin of the OPC tool. When TSCNET Services emerged in 2015 from the joint TSC TSO office in Munich, the MLTOP project was carried on by TSCNET for prototype and business process development in coordination with the TSC TSOs. In the same year, ENTSO-E launched the TSO Project for Coordination Strategy Implementation with the Regional Security Coordination Initiatives (RSCIs), which was continued later under the EU System Operation Guideline (SO GL). This extended the scope of the MLTOP project from the TSC area to the whole of Europe and it became the foundation of the OPC project.

In December 2017, the prototype resulting from the OPC project, owned and developed by TSCNET, went live on a pan-European scale and provided the initial service to all TSOs and RSCs in Europe. Now the prototype tool has been converted into and replaced by a fully-fledged industrial tool: the OPC Pan European Merge Tool, whose development represents a unique success story for TSCNET services and the associated TSOs. What was once an idea for cooperation in the TSC area has been further developed and prototyped by TSCNET in close cooperation with the TSOs and has now evolved into an industrialised pan-European tool used by the outage planners of 38 TSOs and four other RSCs.

TSCNET Services as a major contributor
The OPC project and its development process is a good example of what can be achieved through intensive cooperation between TSOs and RSCs. TSCNET successfully took the lead in this cooperative effort and managed not only to develop services on a pan-European level, but also to successfully coordinate with other stakeholders (RSCs, TSOs and ENTSO-E) and convince them to be part of the success. The development of the OPC project fits perfectly with the narrative of the definition of TSO, RSC and European coordination: The RSCs provide services to TSOs by setting up business processes and tools with their unique regional and technical expertise, thereby combining the knowledge of the individual TSOs – and if the concept has proven to work, they scale it up for the rest of Europe and centralise the infrastructure if necessary (and requested by ENTSO-E).

TSCNET is indebted to its Service Analytics & Quality Manager and responsible OPC Project Convener, Jayaram Anandha, to Sonja Tomić, Junior Operations Manager, and Jorge Alves, Operations Manager, for their input in the development of this highly efficient tool. The predecessor as OPC Project Convener, Tin Bobetko, and Michalis Stamoulis jointly led the business and data standard development of the OPC prototype tool, which was running perfectly until the industrialised version went live.

Two new IT tools for TSO cooperation, one of which developed by TSCNET, have been introduced and improve European supply security 

Linkup
> See APG press release (html)

See article on single page

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)

See article on single page

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.
.

Pictures from ElSeC 2018 #PowerCoordinationEurope (pictures by Coreso)

.

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)

See article on single page

Welcome as 15th shareholder, Transelectrica!

24.09.2018

TSCNET Services is pleased to announce a customer and close partner as a new shareholder: Transelectrica S.A. (Compania Nationala de Transport al Energiei Electrice), the Romanian state majority-owned transmission system operator (TSO) for electricity, is now the fifteenth shareholder of TSCNET. “Bine ați venit!” – welcome!

With the entry of Romania, which became member of the European Union in 2007, TSCNET will provide grid security services to the TSOs of twelve European countries. “Since the Romanian grid already is an integrated part of the European transmission network, Transelectrica plays an important role in the further development of security of supply in south-eastern Europe,” says Maik Neubauer, Managing Director of TSCNET Services.

The Romanian electricity transmission grid consists of 8,759km of overhead lines. “Being a shareholder, allows Transelectrica active involvement in the further development of TSCNET Services as one of the largest European RSCs. This step is also part of a natural and necessary evolution for Romanian Power sector on the European energy map in the context of the implementation of the new model of the internal electricity market, of the European network codes and in the perspective of the Clean Energy Package,” says Adrian Constantin Rusu, the Chief Executive Officer of Transelectrica.

TSCNET Services welcomes Transelectrica as its fifteenth shareholder

Linkup
> Open TSCNET Services press release (pdf, 119kb)

See article on single page

TSCNET Services welcomes SEPS as shareholder

11.06.2018

TSCNET Services is the result of an initiative of European transmission system operators (TSOs), and to this day our company is characterised by a particularly close relationship with our customers, most of whom are also our shareholders. Today we can proudly welcome the Slovak TSO, SEPS (Slovenská elektrizačná prenosová sústava, a. s.), as the new, 14th shareholder. To mark this occasion, we have published a press release on SEPS’ participation as a shareholder.

The Slovak transmission grid consists of 2.138 km of 400 kV lines, 826 km of 220 kV lines and from historical reasons also 80 km of 110 kV lines and is connected with four neighboring countries: Czechia, Poland, Hungary and Ukraine – Burshtyn island. With the exception of the Ukraine, all neighboring TSOs are shareholders and customers of TSCNET. SEPS is solely responsible for electricity transmission throughout the country.

“A quick glance at the map is enough to see that with SEPS’ entry we are now completing the electricity security coordination in the central-eastern part of the continental transmission system” says Uwe Zimmermann, one of the two Managing Directors of TSCNET. “This move will further foster the security of supply in this region and underpins our ambition to further improve the already high quality of our security coordination services.” As a shareholder with full voting rights, SEPS can now also actively contribute to steering and developing the service company.

View of the Slovak capital Bratislava as seen from the Danube. In the background the famous castle. Picture: Džoko Stach, Pixabay.

Linkup
> Open TSCNET Services press release (pdf, 119kb)

See article on single page

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)

.

See article on single page

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)
.

Impressions from the TSCNET Services Open Evening on the eve of ElSeC 2017

.

See article on single page