4. ICT Requirements in a Smart Grid Environment

Energy systems are moving towards more flexible and distributed structures as the share of distributed energy resources gets bigger. New resources connected to the distribution grid offer ancillary services for congestion management and balancing including, e.g. frequency control, aFRR/mFRR, and voltage control. The new TSO-DSO coordination schemes presented in Chap. 2 are studied in this chapter from ICT’s perspective. This chapter introduces a conceptual reference model to help assess where new communication technologies are needed. The second section introduces potential technologies that could be applied. Our focus is more on wireless technologies to ensure flexibility, cost-efficiency, and scalability in large geographically distributed systems. We also present different types of service architectures to manage, secure and orchestrate the increasing number of services created by the new market models. The provision of ancillary services from distribution networks involves the coordination and close interaction between different actors and systems. In the last section, we present a process of capturing ICT requirements for energy systems. The process utilises the Smart Grid Architecture Model (SGAM) that presents a structured approach for modelling the Smart Grid architecture.