This year Dr. Stefan Lankes organizes the autumn meeting of the Operating Systems Group of the German Informatics Society. It is entitled "From safe languages to safe systems" and will take place on September 24-25, 2020 at the E.ON Energy Research Center. Further information can be found under the link.

Lisette Cupelli successfully defended her Dissertation "Datengesteuerte Methoden zur Spannungsregelung in Verteilnetzen: Ein Bottom-Up-Ansatz". Second referee was Prof. Dr. Veit Hagenmeier from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Markus Mirz successfully defended his dissertation "A Dynamic Phasor Real-Time Simulation Based Digital Twin for Power Systems".

The ERIGrid project offers experts free access to leading smart grid laboratories. ERIGrid 2.0 begun in April 2020 and expands the research services and tools of the research infrastructure of the ERIGrid-1 project for validating smart energy networks with an electric backbone. More information about the project can be found under the link.

Ivelina Stoyanova successfully defended her dissertation "Cooperative Energy Management and Cross-Domaion Optimization for Electro-Thermal Devices at City-District and City-Level". Second referee was Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dirk Müller (EBC).

Lukas Razik successfully defended his dissertation "High-Performance Computing Methods in Power System Simulation". Second referee was Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andrea Benigni (Forschungszentrum Jülich).

The first "Massive Open Online Courses" (MOOCs), which were developed within the ASSET project, are now available. The ACS offers the course "Challenges and Solutions in Future Power Networks", which is held by Gianluca Lipari.

On May 1^st, 2020, the second living lab for the energy transition started under the title "TransUrban.NRW". The institute ACS is also involved in the project. More information can be read at the link.

Dr. Marco Pau and Prof. Monti presented results and demos of the SOGNO project at the Stakeholder Consultation Event "Integrated Approach in the Management and Operation of Electricity Transmission and Distribution Networks" organized by CRE. The event was attended by more than 150 participants coming from academia, industry and associations all over Europe and it touched the topics of digitalization, integration of renewable energy, regulation and standardization in future smart grids.

Prof. Monti received a grant of 30 Million Euro from the European Commission to coordinate a large consortium aimed at defining the structure of the data platforms for energy in Europe. This is the first large international project of the new Fraunhofer Center Digital Energy was officially opened today in a ceremony in Hüttenstraße together with the NRW government and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Further information about the opening can be found at the link.

Prof. Monti was selected by the European Commission as chair of a new task force defining research and innovation priorities in energy area for Europe.

Due to the current situation in Germany, ARCS 2020 and all workshops unfortunately have to be cancelled. The submissions will be published as planned.

Alberto Dognini and Edoardo De Din represented ACS at "Navigating IoT Architectures and Standards Days"​ in Brussels. As part of OPEN DEI project​, ACS supported the organization of the workshop; moreover, the achievements of CoordiNet and PlatOne projects have been presented.

Dr. Marco Pau and Prof. Monti represented ACS during the SOGNO project meeting in Brussels. ACS has a leading role in the project, developing the algorithms and software platform for the field trials and directly hosting one of the pilots in the RWTH Campus grid.
More information about the project can be found at the SOGNO website.

The NRG-5 project had its final review in Brussels on February 13th 2020. The project consortium presented the results achieved during the duration of the research and innovation project. ACS, represented by Manuel Pitz and Gianluca Lipari, demonstrated the concepts and technologies developed during the project, in particular with respect to the system integration and laboratory evaluation.
 

Between January 26th and February 10th, Dr. Gianluca Lipari has been visiting the University of Melbourne at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Dr. Lipari was hosted by the chair of Electrical Power Systems, led by Prof. Pierluigi Mancarella, as part of an ongoing joint cooperation within the two research groups.
Dr. Lipari gave a talk on Next generation ICT tools for active distribution networks, presenting the results and findings from research activities carried out in ACS and within ongoing research projects.

FEIN e.V. invites to a talk by Dr. Tim Schlösser about "AI-based state estimation for full observability of distribution grids", as well as an ask me anything sesstion with GridHound founder Artur Löwen. The event will be on March 3rd. More details can be found at the link.

On 4-5 February 2020, Hendrik Flamme presented the progress and challenges of the work package responsible for the situational awareness and incident mitigation modules at the PHOENIX plenary meeting in Athens.

The first PlatOne General Assembly took place at the premises of ACEA, the Roman electricity Distribution System Operator.

In the framework of the Exchange DAAD project "Distributed Stochastic OPF Algorithm for System-Level Control of DC Distribution Grids", Dr. Maria Vrakopoulou from the University of Melbourne visited ACS for the kick-off of the project. Dr. Maria Vrakopoulou will collaborate with Asimenia Korompili and Prof. Ponci in this two-year project for the development of distributed stochastic OPF algorithms. During her stay here, Dr. Vrakopoulou gave a lecture on "RES Uncertainty in Power System Operation".​

​Asimenia Korompili attended the Delft DC Summit, where industry and university representatives exchange their experience on DC systems. Asimenia ​​gave a keynote speech on "Control and Automation ​for DC Distribution Grids - FEN Research Grid".

​Dr. Gianluca Lipari attended the first CoordiNet General Assembly in Rome, where the project consortium discussed the evaluation of the work developed by the demonstrators during first year and the project plans for 2020.

The first ​Urban Energy Lab Symposium took place at E.ON Energy Research Center.
Representatives of industry and research exchanged about future urban energy systems through presentations and discussions.

Prof. Ponci and Wilbert Tarnate participated in a lively and productive project meeting with partners, hosted by OTEAcademy in Athens. The tools, methods and materials for the education of people involved in the energy transition are coming along! The partners are looking forward to putting them to work in the upcoming months.
The project meeting was followed by a two-day trainers workshop. It was a great opportunity for partners to take home lots of ideas for creating a great learning environment for adults.

Hendrik Flamme represented ACS at the technical meeting in Terni (Italy) on 17 December, which was hosted by ASM Terni SpA. The topic of the meeting was the identification of vulnerabilities and cyber security threats related to the trial sites.

The first demo site within the Swedish CoordiNet demonstration to launch is the site Skåne by EON Energidistribution in Sweden. This demo will have 5 flexibility providers, with a volume of 60 MW, participating in the first demo, from January 2020.
ACS developed the underlying load forecast for the prediction of the grid state.
The algorithm serves already as a basis for the trading actions in the Day-Ahead market.

EBC and ACS invited their project partners in the BMWi project AGENT to a three-day workshop in Aachen. The participants worked closely together to advance the implementation of the agent platform and the MPC-based control for non-residential buildings.

Alberto Dognini gave a presentation about "Future Functionalities of the Dynamic Grid" at the Smart Grid Forum - Digital Substations 2019 in Berlin, describing the developments and results obtained in the projects FISMEP, SOGNO and NRG-5.

FEIN e.V. invites to the talk by Prof. Dave Bakken about the topic "Coordination in Decentralized Grids". Details can be found at the link.

Robert Uhl attended the second German Real-time Simulation and Hardware-in-the-Loop workshop at KIT in Karlsruhe, Germany. He presented the status of the institute's work on a novel grid emulator concept, which emulates a measured wideband-frequency grid impedance.

Prof. Ponci has given a keynote speech about Monitoring of the new Power System at the "Fraunhofer Innovation and Networking Days" event in Bonn. "World Cafe" sessions provided a great opportunity for open discussion and networking. The topics covered in all talks and groups also show that in Learning and Education project ASSET is the way to go.

Nikolaus Wirtz represented ACS in the DEFENDER project meeting in Acre (Israel), hosted by Dr. Frucht Systems Limited. In addition to the meeting, several DEFENDER components and the DEFENDER security platform - including a component for simulating potential attack progressions, developed at ACS -  have been demonstrated and evaluated in a local testing area.

Marco Pau and Prof. Monti participated at the SOGNO project meeting in Berlin and at the following innovation event organized by the SOGNO project on the role of 5G for future smart grids and smart cities. The project meeting and the innovation event were hosted by BAUM, one of the partners of the project.​

On October 23, Stephan Gross moderated the session on "Miscellaneous Control Issues" at the IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (IEEE SmartGridComm) in Beijing, China. As part of the session, the following publications were presented.

On 22 October, Stephan Gross presented his publication on "Multi-Microgrid Energy Management Systems in Times of 5G" at the IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (IEEE SmartGridComm) in Beijing, China.

Milica Bogdanovic, Hendrik Flamme, Sebastian Schwarz and Steffen Vogel have successfully presented their research papers at the 45th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON 2019) in Lisbon (Portugal). The titles of their publications can be found under the weblink below.

Prof. Monti and Bettina Schäfer participated at the kick-off conference of the Revierknoten for Energy and Industry at Raketenstation Hombroich. The Revierknoten are part of the Zukunftskonzept NRW.

The final review of the project RESERVE took place in Brussels.

Gonca Gürses-Tran participated in a workshop on "Needs, challenges and opportunities of TSO-DSO coordination". There she presented the business use cases (IEC 62559-2), identified for the demo sites of the H2020 project, Coordinet. The presenters closed the workshop with a panel discussion.

PlatOne is a 4 year H2020 project led by ACS. The consortium includes E.DSO, equipment and software manufacturers and DSOs in Italy, Greece and Germany.
Volatile renewable energy sources in combination with less predictable consumption patterns call for higher levels of observability and exploitation of flexibility. While these two challenges are traditionally treated with separate means, PlatOne proposes an innovative approach to a joint data management for both. Fully respecting the existing regulatory framework, a layered set of platforms will allow to meet the needs of system operators, aggregators and end users. A blockchain based platform is the access layer to generators’ and customers’ flexibilities able to break traditional access barriers by providing certified measures to all the players. In conjunction, certified data and signals will be used for an innovative DSO platform to locally maintain system integrity fostering confidence in flexibility operations. An upper layer will implement a new concept of blockchain-based open market platform to link the local system to the TSO domains and enhance the overall system cost efficiency. Because flexibility means customer involvement, PlatOne puts the grid users at the centre, investigates their needs and expectations and uses the underlying blockchain to unlock the potentials of higher dynamics of response. The platforms will be tested in 3 large pilots in Europe and analysed in cooperation with a large research initiative in Canada. Thanks to strategic partnerships and a unique consortium structure with an excellent network, PlatOne can offer an unprecedented effort of dissemination and exploitation with focus on DSO experts and final users.

Prof. Monti, Gianluca Lipari and Gonca Gürses-Tran attended the technical meeting on Monday where the consortium defined the next steps to develop further the demonstration campaigns.

On Tuesday, essential results of the first work package have been presented to the advisory board and external stakeholders. Among the other presentations, Gonca summarized the business use cases that have been developed to link harmonized services, products, and market models, with the scope and objectives of the CoordiNet demos.

Hendrik Flamme and Nikolaus Wirtz participated in the kickoff meeting of the project PHOENIX hosted by the project coordinator Capgemini at their new office building "147" in the Paris region. The PHOENIX consortium is comprised of 24 partners from 11 countries, cooperating to increase resilience of the European Electic Power and Energy System (EPES) by protecting it against cyber and privacy incidents and attacks.

PHOENIX is part of the EU's largest research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020. The project will run for three years.

RESERVE developed technical solutions in voltage and frequency control of LV and MV grids to enable up to 100% RES. As well as this, RESERVE made updated and new Network Codes and Ancillary Services. The Network Codes are in the process of standardisation. This event was about bringing the message to political decision makers, based on a set of proposals for citizens' discussion.

Dr. Pau presented two papers on "Impact of Network Parameters Uncertainties on Distribution Grid Power Flow" and on "A Compressive Sensing Approach for Fault Location in Distribution Grid Branches" at the 2nd International Conference on Smart Energy Systems and Technologies (SEST), held in Porto, Portugal.

The kickoff meeting of the project "Blockchain Real Laboratory in the Rhineland Territory" was held today. Representatives of RWTH Aachen University met Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, Minister for Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitisation and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, in Düsseldorf.

The trainees Philipp Dreßen and Intan Purnamasari both successfully completed their vocational training to MATSE at the Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems. We congratulate them and wish them success for the future.

On August 21 and 22, the project consortium of the N5GEH project met at the E.ON ERC in Aachen to advance the joint platform development. During the two days performance tests were analyzed and the joint software development was homogenized.

Diala Nouti, Gaurav Roy and Sebastian Schwarz represented ACS during the official iELECTRIX kick-off meeting that was hosted by the techical project director E.ON at their premises in Essen. The consortium includes 15 European partners from 9 European Union member states and Tata Power from India with the overall objective of increasing the role of Local Energy Communities (LECs) in speeding up Renewable Energy Sources (RES) integration in power grids.
iELECTRIX is part of the EU's largest research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020. The project will run for three and a half years.

Stefan Dähling participated in the 5-days kickoff sprint of the project AGENT hosted by Bosch at their research campus in Renningen. The project partners discussed goals, methods and interfaces for their cooperation. An initial architecture for the agent-based building automation system was developed. Moreover, a detailed work plan for the next six month was compiled.

Andrea Angioni successfully defended his dissertation "Uncertainty modeling for analysis and design of monitoring systems for dynamic electrical distribution grids".
Dr. Angioni was the first Ph.D. candidate in the teaching and research area of monitoring and distributed control for Powersystems.