Blueprint for electricity distribution planning in Europe

Practical recommendations for electricity distribution networks planning in Europe have been set out by ACER and CEER.

The guidelines, developed as a requirement of the European Commission’s action plan for the grids, are intended for the region’s grid operators to promote consistency in planning, aligning with the decarbonisation goals and turning grid development into a driver of the clean energy transition.

More than €50 billion ($58 billion) of investments are needed in the electricity distribution grids to 2050 annually and about 960 development plans have to be developed at the EU level.

However, the region’s approximately 3,000 DSOs have diverse planning approaches and particularly for the smaller DSOs with limited resources the process can be challenging.

Also of interest
Good practices for DSO network development plans

Under the Electricity Directive, the distribution network development plans are required to identify medium and long term planned investments and flexibility needs over the next five to ten years.

While some member states apply a 10-year horizon for planning, ACER and CEER recommend this be adopted in all plans, which would bring the DSOs in line with the transmission planning but also with the long term perspective would enable proactive planning of the grids and preventing them from becoming a bottleneck in the energy transition.

The plans should be prepared biennially and both coordinated and time aligned with the TSO development plans and they should take a holistic approach, incorporating scenario development, identification of grid capacity needs and project identification and selection.

DSOs should develop a process to identify network capacity needs by using long-term scenarios as inputs and adopt data-driven network planning approaches and they should develop a process for selecting the optimal network development solution to address identified gaps and include it in their planning methodology.

DSOs also should develop methodologies for evaluating the potential and cost-effectiveness of flexibility solutions and they should systematically embed the assessment of flexibility needs into their respective planning methodologies.

The plans should include project categories such as smart grids, non-copper infrastructure – e.g. SCADA, digital twins, cybersecurity, ICT – DSO-operated reactive compensation devices and, where relevant, DSO-operated storage,, with sufficiently detailed information provided about the planned projects.

Lastly, to enhance transparency and public trust, stakeholder engagement can be improved through structured publication and regulatory oversight, with regulators being given strong scrutiny powers over the plans and monitor their implementation, in particular in the years between successive plans.