In partnership with the members of the Valais balance group (a grouping of the energy operators FMV, OIKEN and ALTIS), the Icare research institute, based at the Swiss Digital Center, has developed GB Flex. The group uses this management tool to make balancing decisions in order to automatically reduce the amount of adjustment energy required, enhance the role of small-scale flexibility and better incorporate renewable energy.
The suppliers of the electricity grid that serves the French-speaking part of Valais, grouped together in the Valais balance group, need to be able to predict their customers’ energy consumption accurately so that they can obtain the right quantity of supply on the electricity market and produce the energy required. This information is forwarded daily to Swissgrid, the national transmission grid operator. Once the figures have been settled, any discrepancies between the forecasts and the actual use are subject to an adjustment penalty.
This penalty can be substantial and results in a real loss of income, hence the importance of providing the most accurate forecast data possible. In a previous project, the Icare research institute developed the algorithms and tool that identify discrepancies in real time, enabling operators to react immediately to avoid adjustment penalties.
Based on these real-time discrepancies, Icare and its industry partners went on to develop the decision-support system GB Flex, which is able to identify discrepancies in real time and make compensation decisions based on certain criteria, which include price (EPEX market) and more importantly the energy flexibility offered by the balance group partners. This flexibility is then made available to the other partners through an internal flexibility marketplace created specifically for this project.
This local exchange platform enables the different partners to ‘absorb’ their energy discrepancies, which ultimately reduces the cost of the adjustment penalties they pay. These continuous forecasts of energy production and consumption also facilitate the integration of energy from renewable sources.
