AUSTRIA
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
Großschönau pilot
This 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 1200 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 like farms, craftsmen, local services, banks, and doctors as well as municipality buildings.
One of the five substations existing has been selected as a pilot (250 kVA, 400 V) for the BEYOND project to which 41 buildings are connected. Currently, 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 counts 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 increase local RES consumption and gain insights into the interdependence of LEC grid tariffs.
eFriends pilot
With the eFriends solution consumers and producers are establishing a peer-to-peer connection and energy trading is done in real-time on 10 second intervals. Therefore, a dedicated set of hardware is installed on-premise (meter and IoT device).
The eFriends demo place will be separated into 2 different locations. One location where producers and consumers are close together (e.g. 3-5 producers and 10-15 consumers in one village) and additional consumers/producers don’t have any specific requirement of their location. The idea is to define energy and grid operation usage prices based on the distance between producers and consumers. Consumers that are willing to consume energy from nearby producers will pay less grid operational costs but a higher price for energy whereas consumers with more distance to their producer will pay higher grid costs but a slightly smaller price for energy.
In total, the sum for locally consumed energy should be a little bit lower than energy consumed from further away. With this strategy, consumers are granted lower prices for consuming local energy and at the same time, producers will get awarded higher energy price payouts when selling energy locally.
Best Connect Pilot
The third Austrian pilot is in Klagenfurt, the capital of the federal state of Carinthia. The city is in southern Austria, near the international border with Italy and it is estimated to have a population of around 101,500 inhabitants.
The pilot is focused on integrating the local energy market between SMEs with potential to install PV systems. We are in process of make agreements with 20-50 SMEs located all over Austria, but the demo installation will be made with 5-10 SMEs in Klagenfurt.
The main objective in this third pilot is to develop an optimal portfolio investment on different technologies (PV, BESS, EV, charging stations) by considering different grid levels. A parallel objective would be to promote the outcome solutions among the business holders/CEOs of the SMEs to promote the investment in DRES and other assets that can promote a more distributed grid.