Digital PV and Grid
Digitalisation is essential to enabling the massive deployment of photovoltaics in the energy system.
Digitalisation is essential to enabling the massive deployment of photovoltaics in the energy system. Indeed, the decentralised nature of PV creates opportunities, for example by enabling individuals to become active contributors to the transition. It also creates significant challenges for the design and operation of the power system. To keep operation and transaction costs in checks, novel, PV-specific methods need to be more scalable, robust, and automatically replicable than what has been used for more centralised generators.
The objective of the working group work is to define use cases and research needs. Its work combines inputs from practitioners with assessments of the state of the art (scientific literature, patent landscaping, gap analysis) to define roadmaps and propose research themes. The group provides networking opportunities among technical and market experts. It complements existing groups such as SolarPower Europe's digitalisation working group (whose focus is more on regulation) and ETIP SNET's working group 4 (whose scope is much broader and takes a technology-agnostic view to generation).
The "Digital PV systems and grid" working group focuses on these challenges. It addresses in particular:
optimal design, web services, application of artificial intelligence including image processing
predictive maintenance, application of IoT for operations and maintenance, cost/benefit analysis on data-driven solutions, machine learning
optimal interaction with other energy system components such as battery storage systems, machine learning for forecasting, application of artificial intelligence to supervisory and distributed control
reduction of transaction costs in consumer-centric markets, local energy communities, trust and traceability (e.g., with blockchain)
Special role of the inverter as data collection hub, control interface with high computing power and low inertia
Leader:
Venizelos Efthymiou, FOSS
Co-Leader:
Pierre-Jean Alet, CSEM
WG Members:
Giovanna Adinolfi, ENEA
Greg Arrowsmith, EUREC
Gofran Chowdhury, 3E
Saverio De vito, ENEA
Giorgio Graditi, ENEA
Barchi Grazia, EURAC
Jonathan Leloux, Lucisun
Ioannis Tsanakas, CEA