OneNet Project: One Electrical Network Infrastructure for Europe

Press release /

OneNet will provide a seamless integration of all the actors in the electricity network across Europe to create the conditions for a synergistic operation that optimizes the overall energy system while creating an open and fair market structure.

The project OneNet (One Network for Europe) is funded through the EU’s eighth Framework Programme Horizon 2020. It is titled "TSO – DSO Consumer: Large-scale demonstrations of innovative grid services through demand response, storage and small-scale (RES) generation” and responds to the call “Building a low-carbon, climate resilient future (LC)”.

While the electrical grid is moving from being a fully centralized to a highly decentralized system, grid operators have to adapt to this changing environment and adjust their current business model to accommodate faster reactions and adaptive flexibility. This is an unprecedented challenge requiring an unprecedented solution. For this reason, the two major associations of grid operators in Europe, ENTSO-E and EDSO, have activated their members to put together a unique consortium.

Under the leadership of Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT (coordinator Prof. Antonello Monti) and its Center for Digital Energy, the project OneNet aims at developing and demonstrating the key instruments for a European approach to energy flexibility. Many projects addressed this issue in the past, but OneNet’s scope and size are unparalleled with a total budget of over 28M Euro (co-funding of the European Commission of about 22M Euro).

OneNet will see the participation of a consortium of over 70 partners. Key partners in the consortium include: already mentioned ENTSO-E and EDSO, Elering, EDP Distribution, RWTH Aachen University, University of Comillas, VITO, European Dynamics, Ubitech, Engineering, and the EUI’s Florence School of Regulation (Energy).

The key elements of the project are:

  1. Definition of a common market design for Europe: this means standardized products and key parameters for grid services which aim at the coordination of all actors, from grid operators to customers;
  2. Definition of a Common IT Architecture and Common IT Interfaces: this means not trying to create a single IT platform for all the products but enabling an open architecture of interactions among several platforms so that anybody can join any market across Europe; and
  3. Large-scale demonstrators to implement and showcase the scalable solutions developed throughout the project. These demonstrators are organized in four clusters coming to include countries in every region of Europe and testing innovative use cases never validated before.

OneNet is an open project. It will benefit from cascade funding from the European Commission, and from the addition of new members to the consortium in the coming three years.

OneNet calls for the creation of a unified vision for Europe’s electricity market to which operators, consumers and stakeholders across Europe are urged to contribute.  To this end, throughout the project duration and afterwards, the project will develop and maintain the open forum initiative “GRIFOn”, a platform to freely discuss results with all relevant stakeholders external to the project and collect their feedback. 

About

The OneNet project is part of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme open call: BUILDING A LOW-CARBON, CLIMATE RESILIENT FUTURE: SECURE, CLEAN AND EFFICIENT ENERGY | Call ID: H2020-LC-SC3-2018-2019-2020 LC-SC3-ES-5-2018-2020

Acknowledgement

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 957739.

Links

Contact

Prof. Antonello Monti, Ph.D
Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT
Mathieustraße 10 | 52074 Aachen | Germany
antonello.monti@fit.fraunhofer.de | Phone +49 241 80-49700