Market architecture for TSO-DSO interaction in the context of European regulation

Following the overall European political goals, massive efforts were recently made to promote an accelerated integration of renewable energy sources (RES) in Europe, creating several operational challenges. One of the key approaches to resolve these is to help harness RESs in an efficient and cost-effective way is to utilise flexibility which can be provided by Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) which include active demand participation, energy storage and electric vehicles. The present paper is based on results and learnings of H2020 project SmartNet (2016–2019), where five coordination schemes for TSO-DSO interaction, necessary for procurement and activation of ancillary services were developed and comparatively evaluated. The paper discusses how different coordination schemes all have specific benefits and attention points related to operation of the TSO and DSO grids, other market participants involved and the market operation in general.