04/01/2024

ERSE – Energy Services Regulatory Authority approved the pilot-project “Flexibilidade Integrada em Regime de Mercado - FIRMe”, developed by E-REDES – Distribuição de Energia, S.A., within the Code for Network Operation of the electricity sector (ROR).

The FIRMe pilot-project, with a two year duration, aims to foster local flexibility markets and to incorporate flexibility as complement to network investment, through 8 use cases, across 3 types of services: restore, dynamic e secure. These services apply to specific situations, namely, in response to failures in the distribution grid, to congestions originating from scheduled unavailabilities of network elements and to the management of peak demand in normal grid conditions.

Flexibility is very important to facilitate and accelerate the energy transition and everyone can participate in these services. Beyond the network operator, 15 flexibility providers participate in the pilot-project, individually or through aggregation, using 32 sites or equipment, including generation, storage and consumption.

Flexibility is the ability of grid connected installations to change their consumption or injection, transitory, according to the grid operator’s needs. The activation of this flexibility, which is available in current network users, facilitates the reception by the network of new renewable generation and its capacity to accommodate new electrical consumptions, such as electric vehicles’ charging or fuel switching for heating applications by using heat pumps.

The experience and recommendations coming from the pilot-project will reflect on regulatory developments, in particular the new Manual of Procedures for electricity distribution technical management, under ROR.E-REDES, promotor of FIRMe pilot-project, publishes information on its implementation and results.

Access here for more information on pilot-projects run within ROR.