Two aggregated market models with an active role of the DSO will be implemented in Austria. The rural demo site at Großschönau will target single households, farmers and municipal buildings and counts with 30-50 connection points. Not only will it demonstrate local market designs but it also aims to provide insights on coupling energy carriers based on district heating. On the other hand, the other demo will connect 20-30 SMEs and integrate the different needs and perspectives of these end-users.
Austria will count with three different pilots: the Großschönau pilot, e-Friends pilot and Klagenfurt pilot.
Großschönau pilot
Gemeindeamt in Großschönau. Photo by Duke of W4, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
One Austrian pilot of the BEYOND project is in the municipality of Großschönau. Großschönau is a town in lower Austria in the region of Waldviertel. It consists of 13 villages and a total population of 1 200 inhabitants. This municipality represents a rural area in Central Europe, without connection to higher traffic infrastructure and without a significant amount of industrial activity. Most of the buildings in the municipality are residential buildings, small commercial units (farms, craftsmen, local services, banks, doctors, etc.) as well as municipality buildings.
One of the five substations existing has been selected as pilot (250 kVA, 400 V) for the BEYOND project to which 41 buildings are connected. For the moment, three prosumers belong to the categories of commercial and municipal buildings while the number of prosumers from the residential buildings is still to be determined within the first stage of the BEYOND project.
This pilot project has Sonnenplatz Großschönau as coordinator and count with the support of Großschönau Municipality, entrepreneurs, residents, and the utility company owning the substation. The main objective is to focus on the DSO substation and implement a distance dependent price scheme (more expensive for other substations). It is expected that this implementation helps to increasing local RES consumption and gain insights of the interdependence of LEC grid tariffs.