Page 24 - European Energy Innovation - Summer 2017 publication

24 Summer 2017 European Energy Innovation

DIGITAL GRIDS

Climate change: how digital
grids help in mitigation

Laurent Schmitt (pictured) is the new Secretary General of the European power transmission system
operators’ association, ENTSO-E. With his experience as a strategy leader in digital grids business, notably
for Alstom/General Electric, Laurent Schmitt explains how they can help Europe build its resilience against
climate change. He wants ENTSO-E to facilitate the fourth industrial revolution in the energy sector.

Power networks are key in microgrids connected to one another chain. From wholesale markets
fighting climate change. They will compose digital power systems facilitated at transmission level, to
bring renewable energy to enabling end to end transactions market facilitation at distribution
consumers. They will be part through blockchain. The sum of these level and down to aggregation of
of this network of networks needed for systems interacting with each other will prosumers’ flexibility.
the deployment of e-mobility, gas to create the new Digital grid.
power, etc. But they will also more and Digital grids will lead to new regulatory
more connect consumers to consumers This requires a fundamental rethink of options, bringing new choices and
allowing millions of peer to peer how the power system is structured. Bi- incentives to electricity consumers
transactions. And this transformation of directional communication and flows, and prosumers. Provided they opt in,
the power system has great potential in storage upstream and downstream the consumers will be exposed to real-time
reducing our carbon footprint. meter, as well as dynamic controls of electricity prices that will reflect scarcity
By 2020, there will indeed be in the flexible demand need to be enabled. of flexibility in the overall system. This
world more than 50 billion of devices Markets also are called to evolve in turn will help them make conscious
connecting prosumers with each to allow a new way of managing choices.
other. Constellations of prosumers’ transactions along the energy value
HOW IS THIS ‘POWER TO THE
PEOPLE’ HELPING FIGHT CLIMATE
CHANGE?
European transmission system
operators were again facing extreme
weather conditions last winter with
temperatures registered once in every
twenty or fifty years. One suspects
these severe weather conditions will
increase as a consequence of climate
change. Digital grids can not only help
reduce our impact on climate but also
build our resilience vis-à-vis the effects
that we start experiencing.

I had the opportunity to directly
contribute to setting up smart cities and
neighbourhoods, putting in practice
the Digital grid concept.

Projects like NiceGrid in France
demonstrate that peer to peer

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