Research on advanced tools and technological development

Proposals must address only one of the 4 following sub-topics whereby not necessarily all points listed in a sub-topic need to be addressed:

1. Advanced modelling tools for:
   • the modelling of the future electricity market to study and analyse the impact and the design of electricity pricing structure from the wholesale markets, to real time markets (balancing and congestion management) and retail markets;
   • modelling and forecasting energy production from variable renewables, associated frequency and voltage controls issues in the electricity grid and benefits associated with the use of storage.
2. Advanced tools for
   • the design and planning and operation of electricity grid infrastructure including distribution and transmission level, taking into account environmental concerns, such as air quality, and footprints and the new constraints from variable renewable generation, the place and role of storage and flexibility; the optimisation of the use of existing electricity assets and network capacity;
   • the development of grid predictive management strategies with uncertainty (forecasting plus stochastic grid management tools), improving the maintenance of electricity assets (distribution and transmission) as well as the associated data management;
   • Enhanced TSO / DSO collaboration and coordination tools, secure data exchange across networks along whole the value chain, ICT tools for cross-border trading for nearly real-time balancing; definition of minimum set of specifications to allow automated digital cross-border electricity market.
   • Enabling technologies for reliable and resilient interconnected European electricity grids, making use of the specific features and the strategic role of the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Galileo and EGNOS.
3. Technological developments:
   • Develop a new generation of reliable, robust and cost-effective energy storage technologies, storage management systems, in particular batteries, able to provide high specific energy rates, large number of life cycles, fast response to the electrical network demands and low maintenance;
   • Power electronics for batteries and software to manage combined or hybridised decentralised energy systems, also combining several energy vectors: a key focus is on significant cost reduction of these key components for homes, districts and larger systems which have the potential to accelerate significantly the energy transition of the electricity network.
4. International Cooperation with non-EU/Associated country member of Mission Innovation[[Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, People’s Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, United States]] on Mission Innovation Challenge 7 on Affordable Heating and Cooling for Buildings:
   • Develop compact thermal energy storage for electricity load shifting that will take up electricity from the grid at the peak times, to be used for heating, cooling or hot tap water at later times. Typical required charging power is 3 kW, for periods of up to three hours. Integration into the building heating system and in the smart electricity grid is a key development element together to the storage materials and technologies.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 2 to 4 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Proposal must clearly indicate which sub-topic 1, 2, 3 or 4 they are targeting.

Proposals should comply with the requirements stated in the section 'Common requirements' of the introduction to the part on the Smart citizen-centred energy system.

A number of tools and future technologies need to be developed, matured and tested to cover gaps and/or to prepare the energy system of 2030 and beyond.

1. Advanced modelling tools are expected to: increase the knowledge on how to design of price structure and magnitude in order to be able to finance e.g. infrastructure and research and innovation; enhance the accuracy of the prediction of electricity production from variable renewables and better qualify and quantity associated issues and remedies
2. Advanced tools are expected to develop new approaches to electricity grid planning, monitoring and maintenance that are better suited to today's future characteristics of the grid and enable savings on infrastructure costs.
3. The technological developments are expected to reduce costs of key technology components to allow European Industry to keep and extend its leadership in power electronics for stationary battery systems of all sizes (from home to utility scale) and the integration of battery systems with high shares of renewable electricity and eventually also heating and cooling.
4. Contribute to the objectives of mission innovation and provide efficient innovative small scale power to heat/cool flexibility measures that can be deployed in a large number of buildings so as to enable the grid to operate with large share of variable renewable energy

Proposals are invited to include ad-hoc indicators to measure the progress against specific objectives of their choice that could be used to assess the progress during the project life.