Swissgrid is launching a pilot project in Switzerland aiming to use storage technologies to balance short-term fluctuations in the transmission grid via a “crowd balancing” platform, known as Equigy, that calls on small decentralised energy sources. The blockchain-based crowd balancing platform complements the existing products in the control energy market and makes it possible to integrate small, fragmented and decentralised units into the balancing process.
Transmission system operator TenneT has previously confirmed the technical feasibility of the platform in a trial in the Netherlands and Germany. Now Swissgrid is investigating the potential of this technology in a pilot project in Switzerland. The project will start in the summer and run until the end of the year.
TenneT, Swissgrid and Italy’s Terna transmission system operator have jointly established a consortium to deploy the technology – which uses blockchain and the Internet of Things – in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. It pursues an open source strategy to enable the faster dissemination of the platform.
The TSOs said that by collaborating they can create a very large market and establishes the conditions that will allow manufacturers of electric vehicles and operators of new technologies and aggregators to prequalify for the market.
The Equigy platform is designed to grow with the increase in renewable energies and sustainable energy solutions and to enable other European transmission system operators to join the consortium and launch the platform in their market.
Besides Swissgrid, the Swiss initiative will involve an original equipment manufacturer (such as a meter manufacturer or a manufacturer of electric cars), a technical aggregator that activates the individual assets and aggregates flexibility, and a commercial aggregator to supply the aggregated flexibility to Swissgrid as primary control power.
The platform was developed using Hyperledger Fabric software, which carries out role-based checks of the transactions using blockchain technology.