European Research Infrastructure supporting Smart Grid and Smart Energy Systems Research, Technology Development, Validation and Roll Out: D-NA4.2 Common Reference Test Case Profiles

Transforming an existing energy system to an intelligent system, a so-called smart grid, requires a multidisciplinary approach because of its complexity involving Information and Communications Technology (ICT) integration, amongst others. The technical challenges arise on how to integrate the new technology into the existing system considering the interoperability and performance. This requires new solutions involving testing scenarios, technology development, validation processes, and roll-out procedures. The ERIGrid 2.0 project aims to enhance the research infrastructures’ capabilities and supports the research and technology development towards smart energy systems in Europe. This necessitates system-level testing before further deployment and roll-out. New innovative testing scenarios, Use Case (UC) and Test Case (TC) need to be developed, extended, updated, and shared with researchers and practitioners.

This report presents the “Common Reference Test Case Profiles” to serve as the reference TCs in the ERIGrid 2.0 project and also facilitates their application for interested external partners. Functional Scenario (FS) are used to define a high-level description of the TC. There are twenty-five TCs developed in the project which are mapped using the six FSs: 1) ancillary services provided by Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and active grid assets, 2) microgrids and energy community, 3) sector coupling, 4) frequency and voltage stability, 5) aggregation and flexibility management, and 6) digitalisation. These six FSs can cover a significant proportion of relevant aspects of a multi-domain cyber-physical energy system.

To facilitate the implementation at Research Infrastructures (RIs), The Holistic Test Description (HTD) approach from the predecessor project ERIGrid is used to formulate the TC, for instance the system description, System under Test (System under Test (SuT)), Object under Investigation (OuI), Domain under Investigation (DuI), Use Case (UC) and Purpose of Investigation (PoI). In addition, each TC is defined with keywords to define the characteristics of the technological area, which is useful for the users to select the specific TC. The keywords are defined corresponding to four relevant dimensions: 1) domain under investigation, 2) the phenomenon under test, 3) type of assessment, and 4) test system/component. Each TC is individually presented as a document with the HTD template.

The TCs serves as the reference pool within and beyond ERIGrid 2.0 by providing, for example, identifying key uncertainties for developing various validation approaches, demonstration of the method for the coupling of real-time/co-simulation and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) as well as approaches for setting up the experiment and collaborate with other RIs, projects, and initiatives.