“Developing REGIONAL ELECTRICITY HIGHWAYS with both AC and DC technologies”

Task co-leaders:
– ITALY – Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico – RSE
– INDIA – Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee – IITR

Sub-tasks:

  • 3.1 Electricity corridors: State-of-the-art worldwide
  • 3.2 Future challenges for electricity corridors
  • 3.3 Increased grid resilience by innovative technologies
  • 3.4 Transmission expansion policies: Worldwide trends best practices and proposed possible improvements
  • 3.5 Monitoring and management of future transmission corridors
  • 3.6 Modernization of the existing electricity market
  • 3.7 Survey on technology innovation needs

Scope

The achievement of ambitious decarbonisation targets set by several governments for 2020, 2030 and 2050 will require extensive electricity system planning and investments. In particular, the development of adequate transmission infrastructures and grid-impacting technologies plays more and more a crucial role to foster the integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES).

The rising fossil fuel prices and the falling technology costs are increasing the competitiveness of renewable energy, leading to relevant effects on today’s power system. In particular, these facts improve security of supply by means of resource diversification, enhance access to reliable and affordable electricity supply through expanded grid infrastructure, reduce carbon emissions but endanger grid stability and reliability. Hence, it is clear that grid interconnections with neighbouring regions and countries are necessary to profit from a diversified generation mix and to balance regional markets. Frequently, large amounts of renewable energy are far from load centres, requiring the need of electricity highways able to transfer the required energy. Hence, electricity corridors would allow benefits for those areas dependent on fossil fuels, those with less RES availability and those with high RES curtailment, bringing energy where necessary and increasing cross border connections capacities.

Main objectives

The key objective of the task is to investigate the opportunities and challenges related to the introduction of electricity highways in power systems. The focus will be on the adoptable technology and the impact on power systems in the framework of high DRES penetration, with the aim to identify the most promising solutions and/or possible synergies among them.

The main objectives of this task are:

  • to investigate the role of future electricity highways in the definition of a Modular Plan for the “global” Transmission System. The idea is to conduct an integrated assessment of different grid-impacting technologies and their implementation into the power system, comparing different technological options towards optimized full RES exploitation, with the lowest possible total electricity cost;
  • to plan the transmission system for optimal utilization of resources to sub-serve the interests of the national economy with due consideration to power market;
  • to investigate the opportunities and challenges related to the transmission planning and optimal utilization of resources.