UBITECH participates at the virtual kick-off meeting hosted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (October 29, 2020) of the OneNet Innovation Action, officially started on October 1st, 2020. The project is funded by European Commission under Horizon 2020 Programme (Grant Agreement No. 957739) and spans on the period October 2020 – September 2023. The vision of OneNet is to 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. This synergistic process is enabled by open IT architectures that guarantee continental level interoperability. This new open architecture will provide new market mechanisms encouraging new business models which will be developed to support both large population areas and small- and medium-sized DSOs and TSOs, in Europe. OneNet will develop a unique concept of scalable interoperable data management able to unlock flexibility at European level creating fair conditions for all the stakeholders. OneNet will have an agnostic approach to define solutions that are not only open today but also open to future development.
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. Thus, OneNet sees 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 ENERGY, Engineering, and the EUI’s Florence School of Regulation (Energy). In this context, the OneNet project aims to address the growing needs of TSO‘s and DSO’s to have real-time insight into the operation of their networks to work in a closely coordinated and synergistic way, while unlocking and enabling new flexibility markets in a fair and open way. Goal is to enable a cost effective, seamless and secure bidirectional power flow to and from network customers as active players while supporting grid operators in their system responsibilities.
Within OneNet, UBITECH ENERGY is the Leader of WP2 “Products and services definition in support of OneNet”, while it will have significant participation as Task Leader and participant in all the others Work Packages. In particular, UBITECH ENERGY revisits European policy frameworks and strongly engages the consumers in order to maximize the flexibility resources that the grid operators can use to meet the clean energy challenges. Moreover, UBITECH ENERGY assures that all legal, regulatory and cybersecurity guidelines and principles are incorporated in the design and the development of the OneNet Interoperable Network of platforms. Emphasis will be given in guaranteeing the security of the individual subsystems, in order to address security concerns, in relation to receiving and sending information and sensitive data, in a satisfactory way. In terms of the monitoring elements that will offer the real-time view of the security posture, this involves collecting data from two levels of sources: network infrastructure level and endpoint level. Network infrastructure level datasets allow to observe threats in a wider scope, whereas endpoint datasets are mostly application specific, allowing the in-depth analyses of threats specific to a certain application type. UBITECH ENERGY develops new security mechanisms to characterize different types of data flows using anomaly detection techniques based on different theoretical backgrounds, learning methods (e.g. clustering).
Finally, as highly competent in the energy services sector, UBITECH ENERGY is well positioned to exploit its strong image and connections to promote the project´s outcomes. Through its wide network of business and academic institutions that is cooperating with, will hold customer innovation events, customer specific innovation workshops through established technical innovation mechanisms, such as R&I organizations and Scientific Communities.
