Concept for a Stepwise Approach for an Automated Verification Process of Balancing Services

To ensure system stability in the power grid, transmission system operators (TSO) are responsible for balancing grid frequency fluctuations by means of balancing services. In many cases, balancing service providers (BSP) aggregate several technical units for the provision of balancing energy. However, beyond the compensation process for the BSP, no monitoring process for the proper provision of required balancing energy by the TSOs exists so far. This paper presents a stepwise concept for a verification process in which the most relevant monitoring requirements of the TSOs are met. These include the exclusive participation of pre-qualified technical units in the balancing service, as well as the correct forwarding of the requested balancing energy from the BSP to its technical units and their proper provision within a tolerated range. The presented concept enables the tamper-resistant storage and retrieval of the required data for verification. In the second stage of the concept, the utilization of a Zero-Knowledge Proof additionally ensures that the verification is performed automatically and in compliance with the BSP’s trade secrets. The integration of the monitoring of individual units creates additional value since filtering for faulty units is made possible for both the TSO and the BSP. For a possible implementation of the concept, we discuss and evaluate the usage of the technologies blockchain and public key infrastructure.