ICOEUR

Intelligent Coordination of Operation

and Emergency Control of

EU and Russian Power Grids

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Concept & Objectives

The ICOEUR project (Intelligent coordination of operation and emergency control of EU and Russian power grids) addresses the topic ENERGY.2008.7.2.1: “Innovative operational and monitoring tools for large power systems” within the call FP7-ENERGY-2008-RUSSIA, FP7 Cooperation Work Programme: Theme 5 Energy.

Concept and Project Objectives

  • Optimization of the use of installed capacities
  • Reliability improvements reducing the economic cost of power outages
  • Sharing reserve capacities and reducing the level of reserves required
  • Providing mutual support for the interconnected systems in case of emergency
  • Facilitating large scale integration of renewable energies due to higher flexibility of the interstate network operations
  • Improved control of system frequency to minimise major disturbances

These above are the major benefits that motivate TSOs to build up interconnections to neighbouring transmission systems. These are the reasons for the existence of several large interconnections like UCTE, NORDEL or IPS/UPS in Europe and for the attempt to interconnect these systems to one harmonically working technical organism. Presently, there are following enlargement requests of the UCTE area in the pipeline:

  • the interconnection of Turkey ,

  • the interconnection Tunisia - Libya,

  • and, most significantly, the interconnection of the two largest systems UCTE and IPS/UPS

These interconnections would result in the largest electric synchronous interconnections in the World, which provides a large reliable energy market platform to all participants. It should be mentioned that there are actually several system congestions identified within the networks of EU and Russia which have to be relieved with the right technology.

But an efficient and secure operation of the largest electrical interconnections worldwide assumes

  • optimal choice of network interconnection and extension technologies

  • effective control and monitoring systems and strategies, as well as

  • well defined protection functions that ensure secure operation of all partner networks in critical cases

These are the core requirements for a large-scale interconnection of EU and Russian networks and their optimal realisation is the ambitious vision of the ICOEUR project.