Lessons learned from the EU-funded INTERRFACE project

In an exclusive interview with Nikos Bilidis, the coordinator of INTERRFACE, Areti Ntaradimou learns more about the goals, takeaways and future plans of this EU-funded project.

Ntaradimou and Bilidis spoke in the lead-up to INTERRFACE's public Final Event on 7 December, where the team will present the work and outcomes of their 4-year operation, and their presence at Enlit Europe's EU Projects Zone, from the 29th of November to the 1st of December in Frankfurt.

Could you please describe INTERRFACE in a nutshell to us? Main focus, goals?

INTERRFACE is an EU-funded project under the framework of H2020. The project initiated its activities on January of 2019 and is currently running its final phase, successfully concluding its activities in December of this year. The main aim of the project is to create a central innovative architecture in the form of an interoperable platform that connect all the energy stakeholders including - but not limited to - System Operators, Consumers, Flexibility Service Providers, Market Operators and aggregators and allow the transparent and seamless data exchanges. All this in an effort to facilitate non-discriminatory participation in markets, to increase their liquidity, to ease market surrounding processes and to allow efficient and structured coordination between System Operators in their efforts to commonly procure services but also between all the involved stakeholders.

More about INTERRFACE

How did INTERRFACE achieve these goals?

INTERRFACE defined standardized products for energy services and standardized market designs, which could be applicable at a pan-European level, while at the same time respecting national particularities. It also aimed to incentivize smaller consumers and prosumers to participate in energy markets and to lift barriers that currently exist by endorsing transparency and allowing more data to reach the players allowing them to make more informed decisions and to shape their market strategy.

All this comes together through the Interoperable pan-European Grid Services Architecture, the so-called IEGSA platform, bringing together and hosting new and existing services, business models and coordination schemes, facilitating the connection to new and existing incentive-based market platforms through an efficient data management scheme.

So in a nutshell, IEGSA is an open platform for sharing data among all participants in the electricity value chain, from a local and regional up to a pan-EU level, that can enable Transmission and Distribution System Operators and customers to coordinate their efforts, to maximize the potential of RES, and can facilitate transparent market mechanisms that can allow the participation of versatile actors leading eventually to the unlocking and the utilization of an untapped so far flexibility potential.

How did INTERRFACE ensure that all the key actors of the European electricity scene are involved in your ambitious goals?

INTERRFACE featured a very big consortium consisting of 43 partners covering 15 EU countries and 1 affiliated country and covering the whole energy value chain. This is one of the biggest assets of the INTERRFACE project as it enabled us to cover an extended geographical scope and to hear the voices of all relevant actors.

The project consists of 7 Transmission System Operators, 8 Distribution System Operators, a Market Operator, an Energy Regulator, 3 Aggregators, a Utility Company, 10 Service and Technology Providers, 10 Research Centers and Universities, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity and the Florence School of Regulation.

One of the project’s roles was that of a facilitator. Until relatively recently, it used to be all about facilitating the coordination between DSOs and TSOs, now there are more actors in the sector. Especially consumers. How does INTERRFACE ensure the coordination between all these actors?

Ensuring the coordination between Transmission and Distribution System Operators and consumers/aggregators/flexibility service providers, as well as Market Operators, has been the core aim of INTERRFACE since day one. The consortium had already identified the increasing need for coordination and transparency between all involved actors in the electricity markets value chain and it worked consistently towards achieving this challenging goal. The IEGSA platform is the main facilitator of this coordination as it offers the space where all actors can securely communicate and exchange data. System Operators coordinate their needs through well-defined coordination schemes based on the Active System Management Report of ENTSO-E and EDSO and thus can commonly define the procurement of services in an efficient way.

Thus, consumers and aggregators can view in one shared space the actual needs of the system and also organize their portfolio efficiently in the Flexibility Register, by creating resource groups for each type of service or product. Bids can be submitted in various markets through IEGSA as a common entry point to versatile markets. Market designs that favor the participation of smaller consumers have been incorporated as well, targeting peer-2-peer trading and local self-consumption optimization through innovative smart tools, controllers and frameworks.

Thus, IEGSA creates an ecosystem accompanied by novel components and tools where information flow is seamless, based on standards, endorsing interoperability and easier access to market for everyone.

The project is about to conclude. What are the main findings and lessons learnt?

As I mentioned, INTERRFACE project focused on the deployment of a pan-European IT architecture (IEGSA) which combines and considers all local specificities with the aim of an efficient and coordinated procurement of flexibility services. The project results show, that each national power system has its own distinct characteristics, such as flexibility portfolio, ancillary services and markets maturity, grid interconnections and constrains, etc.

It is therefore necessary to implement consistent rules and strategies at the European level in order to maximise the effectiveness of flexibility provision while recognising the local needs and conditions across Europe. In order to scale-up products like IEGSA, we need to consider many aspects, such as challenges related to market design, to data exchange or to the regulatory framework.

One of the challenges is about the definition of roles across the electricity value chain, as it will allow an efficient interaction and coordination among different actors, which is crucial for the interoperability of our IEGSA platform. From the market design perspective, for the IEGSA to be scaled up and replicated in the future, a combination of flexible design, customizability and sufficiently powerful algorithms will be required to meet the evolving standards.

Furthermore, the integration with multiple distributed data exchange platforms at cross-border or even at cross-sector level is also a key factor for the success of the platform developed within INTERRFACE project.

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The project created a platform and a system that would be plug and play. Did that occur and what were the main difficulties that you faced?

We have successfully developed IEGSA as a plug-n-play solution - given the technical and regulatory constraints imposed by the rather complex environment - by utilizing common data standards and communication protocols to enhance the interoperability of the provided solution. The whole platform is offered as an easy to install package. Of course parameterization is essential. For each product and for each country the environment of the market needs to be “described” before integration is achieved; however this is a quite straightforward process that requires only a minimum development effort.

The main challenge lies in the data exchange. Each system and market operator uses different semantics and vocabulary, as well as different protocols. Harmonization is needed, which is often difficult to achieve as actors are often reluctant to change their established practices. However, in the case of the involved actors in the consortium we identified that once becoming familiar with IEGSA they easily noticed the advantages that such a harmonization can bring both at national but also at cross-border level. As a lesson learnt, we understand that this process requires regulatory support in order to lift the barriers and move towards more harmonized products services and market designs at a pan-EU level.

In INTERRFACE you had 7 demo areas. Which of them were more challenging and why, in your opinion?

All demo areas presented certain challenges as they are all addressing very relevant aspects of the future landscape of the power systems and all demo areas of INTERRFACE are quite intertwined. Demo pillar 1 dealt with Congestion Management and Balancing, demo pillar 2 concerned Peer-2-Peer trading while demo pillar 3 dealt with the pan-EU market. In all pillars we tried to address the most important challenges that exist today and provide solutions that could be easily promoted and accepted by end-users.

This acceptance can be highlighted as one of the main challenges, as it requires the provision of incentives so that end-users are eager to change their common practices and update their legacy systems. Interoperability is another main challenge in all demo areas. Existing standards often are not enough to address all needed data exchanges and to facilitate many novel processes. Solid proposals that have been tested and validated are necessary and INTERRFACE managed to do so in many occasions.

New roles have been proposed for the Harmonized Electricity Market Role Model and new profiles have been designed to enrich the library of the Common Information Model, where the existing ones could not cover the requirements.

Efficient, secure and stable integration of RES in the electricity grid is one of the most important topics for the EU Commission and REPowerEU. How did INTERRFACE contribute to this?

Although REPowerEU is a new initiative, and INTERRFACE had started a few years ago, its concept is very relevant to the objectives of REPowerEU. One of the main aims of INTERRFACE is to address congestion issues and the balancing.

IEGSA facilitates grid and bid qualification in an attempt to avoid the issuing of connection permits to RES in points of the Grid which are already congested and to incentivize RES connection in less congested areas. It contains tools to optimally manage self-consumption within micro-grids for service provisioning and grid support when requested by the SO, allowing further RES installation and participation in the electricity mix.

Market designs that allow peer-to-peer trading of prosumers that own small DERs are in place which along with the trading ensure the avoidance of congestions. The Coordination Platform of IEGSA allows the communication and data exchange between system operators. This facilitates the more efficient management of the system, so that balancing of both Transmission and Distribution grids becomes more effective, thus ensuring the resilience of the grid and enhancing its ability to host and balance renewable energy sources.

This approach can comprise an important building block in the effort of EU to become independent in terms of its energy needs and make it self-sustainable, ensuring clean, secure and stable provision of energy to the region.

What is next for the INTERRFACE team? How will the sector benefit from your expertise and knowledge?   

We are delighted to see the IEGSA Platform being adopted in other new R&D projects such as OneNet, BD4NRG and i-STENTORE. IEGSA plays also an important role in the recently established EU Data Reference Architecture of the BRIDGE Initiative. We aim to enrich IEGSA with new functionalities in order to serve the purposes that are envisioned in each one of these endeavors. INTERRFACE main exploitable results are already being marketed to interested stakeholders aiming towards the maximum uptake, focusing on different target groups as they have been presented before.

INTERRFACE is also now publishing a roadmap addressing the scalability and replicability considerations for IEGSA in order to pave the way to the markets and to more commercial exploitation. This document will soon be released as a public paper, well before the end of the project. We are also currently active in drafting our recommendation towards policy-makers and regulators based on our findings and lessons-learnt.

We believe that this is an activity of pivotal importance as regulation can act as a key driver towards our efforts in connecting the energy stakeholders at a pan-European level, fostering TSO-DSO-Consumer coordination, the integration of a higher RES capacity in the electricity mix and the harmonization of markets designs and products across Europe.

INTERRFACE will present the work and outcomes of their 4-year operation on 7 December at their public Final Event, register to attend in Brussels or to join online.