Ireland

The Irish case will be based in the Dingle Peninsula, the westernmost point of Ireland. ESB Networks, who carries out all the functions relating to the electricity distribution system in the country, is developing the Dingle Project since 2019 with the aim of look at how we can future-proof the electricity network for the benefit of local actors as households, farms and businesses. In BEYOND we will be working in parallel to this project to establish our local market case in Ireland.

Minard Castle at the Dingle Peninsula

Under the main supervision of the International Energy Research Center (IERC), the main objectives to fulfill are:

–        Analyze different local energy market designs for the Dingle community in order to benefit the local actors

–        Identify the route from local to regional/national market

–        Identify the best possible solution considering the Irish Grid Code, regulations, etc.

–        Identify the barriers and recommend the possible changes needed to implement the best market design solutions.

 

20 prosumers will participate in the Irish case from which 15 homes have AC batteries and 5 with hybrid models of AC and DC charging. Also 9 are smart houses with rooftop solar PV panels installed. More specifically, the test site is located on Ventry 10 KV network.

Network on the Dingle Peninsular. Photo by ESB Networks.

With the collaboration of ESB Network, we could get access to required data for Dingle community both prosumer data and grid constraints. Used as an input, this data will be used by the local energy market in real-time simulation-in-the-loop (SIL) and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) environment.

Two use cases (UCs) will be demonstrated in this scenario:

–        Local market aimed at local balancing – maximize local consumption of locally generated electricity

–        Local market interacting with the wholesale market – demonstrate the market participation mechanisms for buying or selling of deficit/surplus energy of local energy community in the wholesale market

In this UCs, the DSO will validate market transactions before market closing and a local market operator is an actor responsible to co-ordinate trading of surplus/deficit energy of the local energy community in the wholesale energy market.