What means grid-serving?
Definition of grid-serving
Single or multiple electrical installations (generators, consumers or storages) which contribute to reduce grid costs (e.g. reduction of grid bottlenecks, grid expansion demand or optimized grid operation) are grid-saving. This can be achieved by knowledge, planability, or controllability of the plants by the grid operator and/or a contribution to the equalization of the grid load. For this purpose, context-dependent behavior is necessary, depending on the grid situation. Furthermore, no additional grid expansion may be caused in the same or other grid levels. In general, the system must be compatible with the grid.
Article in et – Energiewirtschaftliche Tagesfragen in March 2021 (published on 03.05.2021)
With the increasing digitalization in the energy system, new consumers, such as electric vehicles and distributed generators, can be flexibly controlled in the future. The “flexibility describes the technical ability of a system to change the current and/or predicted power [P, Q]” [1]. This will enable new modes of operation (e.g., price-oriented) as well as monitoring or control by grid operators. In the project “Bidirectional charging management (BDL)”, these modes of operation and control options are being investigated, which raises the question of whether or when a system (here: consumer, generator or storage) is grid-serving.
Since the term “grid-serving” currently leaves a lot of room for interpretation, the article distinguishes it from related terms and derives a uniform definition of the term “grid-serving”. For this purpose, terms from the literature were first sorted and a definition was deduced, which is then clarified by application cases. In a final excursus, the connection conditions of charging facilities for electric vehicles were analyzed in the context of the created definition of grid-serving.
Sources:
[1] Müller, Mathias et al.: Dezentrale Flexibilität für lokale Netzdienstleistungen – Eine Einordnung des Flexibilitätsbegriffs als Grundlage für die Konzipierung einer Flexibilitätsplattform in C/sells. In: BWK – Das Energie-Fachmagazin 6/2018. Düsseldorf: Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI), 2018.
