System Operations Committee
The liberalisation of the electricity market and the unbundling of vertically integrated companies, created a new situation which the European Transmission System Operators (TSOs) have to master from the operational point of view.
In this regard, TSOs are faced with uncertainties in the real-time operation of the grid including the operational planning phase with its market relevant activities. The exact generation pattern is not always known to TSOs in advance. They can only make assumptions which become more reliable as the moment of real time execution approaches.
Such operational uncertainties require from TSOs to plan and ensure a broad scope of so called ancillary services to enable themselves to cope, among others, with balancing challenges, keeping the voltages at appropriate levels, system security and restoration planning, and, covering transmission losses.
The amount of power exchanges across different TSOs’ control zones dramatically increased since the liberalization of the market. In most cases this led to congestions on tie-lines between control zones and sometimes to internal congestions within the zones themselves. These constraints have to be taken into account by TSOs already in the operational planning phase, and communicated to the market in form of transmission capacity allocation rules and procedures.
The Secretariat’s System Operations Team, supports the activities of ENTSO-E’s System Operations Committee (SOC) as well as associated Working and Regional Groups. The Committee represents all TSOs and is chaired by Carlo Sabelli from Terna, Italy. Its vice-chairman is Jens Møller Birkebæk of Energinet.dk.
The System Operations Committee (SOC) ensures a high standard of operability, reliability and security of the European electricity transmission systems within the framework of liberalised energy markets.
The Committee provides proposals for harmonization of operational standards (network codes and rules) on the pan-European level and promotes operational coherence among regions. It contributes to ensure compatibility between system operation, market solutions and system development issues.
On pan-European level, the SOC defines and updates technical and operational standards for implementation by regions and individual TSOs, as well as reports to the ENTSO-E Assembly on how these standards have been implemented.
The SOC develops and ensures the implementation of common tools used in the TSOs’ operational environment such as data exchanges, network models and forecast tools, wide area measurement system, etc. It maintains the timeliness and effectiveness of inter TSO normal and emergency operating procedures by coordinating data requirements and defining data confidentiality principles.
Further tasks of the SOC are to monitor, assess and, where appropriate, report on the quality-level of transmission system operation and important transmission network operation events on a regular basis, and to provide a forum for addressing the operational and security reliability aspects of the electric transmission systems in Europe.
In order to fulfil these goals a broad range of activities are identified and closely followed on the SOC level and the level of SOC’s Regional Groups (RGs).
Activities on the SOC level:
- Developing European operational standards;
- Protecting critical systems;
- Developing and maintaining the Electronic Highway;
- Developing a functional model;
- Defining a methodology for dealing with operational reserves;
- Classification and follow up of incidents;
- Promotion and enhancement of coordinated system operation and services.
Regional Group activities:
- Enhancing and developing operational processes;
- Investigation of frequency deviations;
- Enhancement and maintaining of network models and forecast tools;
- Observing and enhancing the system performance and dynamic behaviour;
- Compliance monitoring and enforcement; and
- Integrating internal and interconnecting external systems.