5G-SOLUTIONS: Industrial Demand Side Management

Overview of the 5G-SOLUTIONS Trial on Industrial Demand Side Management 

This trial focuses on Demand Side Management from a business consumers perspective (large, medium or small enterprises). Specifically, it deals with the optimal scheduling of industrial loads during normal plant operation, the computation and actuation of flexibilities offered on the Dispatching Market and the control actions needed to keep the peak power consumption limited.

• The first aspect covered is the planning and aggregation of loads. A distributed monitoring and load shifting control system (based on sensors, meters and in-cloud data analytics and control tools), will be set up to perform a real-time schedule of loads and assess the energy behaviour of each activity/production, with the aim of evaluating possible actions of power reduction to be offered on the Dispatching Markets. This action could be performed by the customer as a single actor of the market if the power reduction constraints set by the Regulator are met, or in aggregated form with other prosumers (by means of an Aggregator). Here, 5G technology is expected to play an important role, as both data communication from the field to the cloud and communications among the Aggregator and involved customers must be reliable, fast and with minimal delay (latency).
• The second aspect concerns the peak power consumption, which is one of the critical parameters for this class of customer segment. The simultaneous use of electrical devices may involve peak loads that can result in the tripping of commercial meters due to overload detection. With the introduction of new tariff schemes accounting for the peak power consumption in addition to the energy component (e.g. maximum demand) and the presence of fluctuating Renewable Energy Sources (RES), the problem of keeping the peak power limited is quite important: it appears crucial to rely on a technological solution to promptly switch off the loads responsible for the peak/overload and, therefore, to reschedule the load in a more efficient way. 5G technology can play a crucial role: a post-commercial meter will be used to detect the power peak/overload and generate an alert, which will be transferred to a pre-selected set of control devices that will reduce the power consumption and trigger the computation of a new load schedule as a recovery action.

Hence, this trial aims to demonstrate that 5G technology can be used for offering new grid services and drastically reducing the tolerance implemented on the meters before disconnection, without having an impact on the customer perception and quality of service. Distributed  indoor sensors (post fiscal meters), Energy Management Systems and Aggregator Management system  are part of the testing and validation of this use case.  

Use Case Data Summary

Locations: Turin

Dates: Q4-2020, Q2-2021, Q2-2022

Partners involved: ENEL, IREN

Funding reference: H2020-ICT-2018-3; ICT-19-2019 - Advanced 5G validation trials across multiple vertical industries.

Funding cycle: June 2019-November 2022.

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