The growing contribution of renewable energies and the liberalisation process in electricity markets result in higher system stresses in terms of increasing system loadings and fluctuations. Combined with a delay of grid enhancements this results in an increasing risk of wide-area blackouts and a threat for successful grid restoration. This project will investigate new grid restoration strategies to ensure a fast, coordinated and stable system restoration. In particular it will, on the one hand, give recommendations whether and how renewable generators shall contribute to the restoration process and, on the other hand, identify technical re-quirements that must be met observing the fact that the vast majority of renewable generation is connected to the distribution systems without direct control by the transmission system operators (TSO). To support the operators during this difficult procedure, a demonstration tool will be developed which shall guide the operators through the restoration process and give helpful information about possible next steps and their consequences.
With over 40% of the project budget, the Austrian partners are key contributor in terms of work load and overall project success. Specifically, TU Wien (TUW) will be involved in all technical work packages together with the main applicant TU Kaiserslautern and will take the lead in two of five technical work packages related to the analysis of existing and the derivation of new grid restoration strategies. TUW will further mainly be involved in modelling of distributed energy resources having an impact on grid restoration and elaboration of recommendations for network operators. KNG-Kärnten Netz GmbH (KNG) and Netz Oberöster-reich GmbH (NOÖ) will provide experience in existing grid restoration procedures and will be involved in the development of new grid restoration strategies and a demonstration tool for grid operators. Specifically, KNG's and NOÖ's experience in network operation with a large share of distributed generation (especially small hydro, PV, wind and combined heat and power) will be beneficial for the project.