CROSSBOW hosted its Final User Group Workshop
On 30th March, CROSSBOW celebrated its final conference in a hybrid format, with the in-person sessions hosted in Vienna. The event, co-organised by UKIM and ETRA with the support of the Energy Community (EnC), showcased the results of the CROSSBOW project, including use cases findings, impacts and barriers found.
In the opening statement, the EnC restated their strong support for CROSSBOW and interest in its achievements. It was noted that the beginnings of the Project coincided with communication of EU’s Clean Energy Package (CEP) and finalisation of the Network Codes (NCs), thus a period marked by an emerging market model. At the time, EnC was delighted to see the “avant-garde” proposal of the Project that envisaged implementation of certain advanced proposals in CEP. In addition, the emphasis on cross-border applications was a major advantage given the regional integration focus of the EnC. Now that the focus has shifted to the adoption of NCs in the EnC Contracting Parties, the hope is that the knowledge and tools built by CROSSBOW will support stakeholders in the challenges ahead.
Moreover, the event addressed an open discussion on “Evaluating the future of the SEE Energy Transition” where stakeholders will participate such as Energy Community representatives, TSOs, DSOs, or NGOs.
The event concluded by highlighting the next steps after the project completion and exploitation plans ahead for its 9 products awarded by the EU Innovation Radar.
Conclusions
The user group meeting showed the importance of the work done in the CROSSBOW project for the development of the power systems in the region of SEE. The presentation of the results from the final phase of the CROSSBOW project that aimed to assess the technical, economic, social, and environmental impact of the CROSSBOW solutions showed their high potential for contributing to a more secure and cost-efficient operation of power systems on a regional level. These results were acknowledged during the panel discussion especially the impact of CROSSBOW on the increased penetration of RES generation as a key element for clean energy transition and as the main goal of the region for the future. In addition, the impact on the development of electricity markets in close to real-time as well as their regional integration, integration of new technologies for the provision of flexibility, and increased security in the system operation as prerequisites in the process of the clean energy transition.
It was stressed that the project enabled not only development but also the practical implementation of advanced innovative concepts in a number of experiments performed in the real environment in the region of SEE. The solutions developed within the ROC-BC product can transform the newly established security coordination center in SEE, SELENE, into a more advanced Regional Operation Centre. The use of RES-CC to reduce curtailments of RES generation is viable if standardised coordination and control schemes are used. The use of Hybrid RES-DU, STO-CC, VSP, and DSM-IP are to integrate and optimise RES and new technologies for storage and DSM for efficient operation of the system, provision of flexibility for balancing, congestion management, and security. For WAMAS, it is needed to go further than bilateral contracts between TSOs and facilitate the scheme between flexibility assets, from regulatory and technological perspective. For AM, once services provided are common, the solution will have much better usability. Finally, CFP coordination and organisation of cooperatives in democratic matter, so a clear definition of this cooperative is and how they can make use of the platform/community is needed. A lot of work but can be achieved, and it must be as the discussions from the meeting stressed that this is the path which we need to follow. Technical issues need to be considered, as well as social aspects.
Download here the event report and watch the online session below.