Summary:
In the context of a potential electricity shortage in the spring of 2023, the remote control of intelligent
micro-distributed storage (MSID) is of increasing interest to distribution system operators (DSOs).
The SFOE MSID project brought together academic actors (HES-SO Valais-Wallis and Icare) and
industrial actors (ElectrInfo, Enalpin, FMA, OIKEN, Seic-Télédis, Studer-Innotec) with the aim of solving
two major problems caused by the injection of photovoltaic (PV) energy, which are the optimisation of
self-consumption and the management of the grid voltage. Indeed, two DSOs are facing the first issue
with different use-cases. As far as SEIC-Télédis is concerned, the issue of self-consumption is present
at two sites - two private houses wanting to make use of local storage. Visp and Enalpin also have this
problem, but for the station building where their premises are located.
Regarding the second issue addressed by the project, two sites of two different DSOs were used to
carry out the demonstrations. In the case of FMA, it is an end-of-line farm located in Gryon in the canton
of Vaud. The replacement of the diesel generator by PV needs to control the storage to stabilise the
voltage. Finally, the last site is located in Sierre at the Pont-Chalais tennis court. The high production of
the solar panels in the tennis hall causes voltage problems on the grid.
The OFEN MSID project has made it possible to respond to the various problems with the
implementation of a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) platform and a control box. This device controls the
various inverters (Xtender Next3, from Studer-Innotec, Victron, from Victron Energy, or IMEON, from
IMEON Energy) in place on the various sites and collects as much useful data as possible generated
by the devices in place (inverter, battery, heat pump, DHW, etc.). A VPP visualisation platform is made
available to the DSOs and end customers in order to observe historical and actual data updated every
15 minutes. The VPP platform developed within the framework of the SFOE MSID project also offers
the possibility of creating control algorithms. These algorithms are built with the help of the data collected
but are also generated. The photovoltaic production prediction algorithms as well as the financial
algorithms linked to the OFEN GBFlex marketplace are available and can be used in the creation of the
control algorithm. These combinatorial strategies have allowed the optimisation of the intelligent control
and thus allow a better management of the PV production and energy consumers on the sites.
The demonstrations presented in this final SFOE MSID report prove the efficiency of the system. On the
self-consumption side, we tested the system in real conditions at our OFF-GRID development site before
deploying it at partner sites. On the grid voltage stabilisation side, we demonstrated that in the event of
a voltage surge, the system was ready to react in order to reduce the problem as much as possible by
driving the batteries available in the project. All the tested and validated combinatorial strategies can be
found in chapter 5 of this report.
In conclusion, this project has allowed us to aggregate and remotely control several sites with very
different use cases but with common problems. With the demonstrators in place, we are able to prove
the usefulness of setting up an intelligent system to control distributed micro-storage. Within the
framework of the SFOE MSID project, six implementation sites have been created. The system is
scalable, and we estimate between 500 and 1000 sites in the current version of developments. The
algorithm creation system already provides for actions in the event of a planned shortage to ensure
maximum availability of storage before a period of 4 hours in autarkic mode for example.
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