Jalal Kazempour

AVANGUARD will develop and test the first fully free, open-source tool suite, supported by a dedicated, free-to-access data hub, to enable all relevant stakeholders (grid operators, plant developers and managers, energy planners, policymakers, traders, and regulators) to assess and optimize the role of Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) in EU energy system, evaluating techno-economic viability and grid reliability. Effectiveness will be demonstrated via a pan-EU campaign spanning 4 Use Cases (UCs), involving local grid operators (e.g. Spain & Portugal, Denmark & Sweden, Italy, Croatia), using heterogeneous datasets and assessing the performance of various LDES technologies (e.g. innovative pumped hydro, Carnot batteries, innovative electrochemical storages, power-to-heat, Power-to-Hydrogen) thanks to the presence in the consortium of LDES technology manufacturers. Building on partner-developed tools and UC-supplied shared data, AVANGUARD will assess through a pan-EU validation campaign, the potential role of LDES in different grid and energy market contexts also looking at multi-vector exploitation. All tools will be integrated into a single platform, co-developed with stakeholders, validated for usability and effectiveness. A dedicated training campaign will be performed to introduce EU stakeholders to the platform. Promoting the use of its tools and via its validation campaign, AVANGUARD overarching objective is to accelerate LDES penetration in the EU energy system by developing and demonstrating a free, open-source (CC BY, MIT), “ONE-STOP-SHOP” digital platform supporting all LDES stakeholders - TSOs, DSOs, RES developers, policymakers, and LDES technology providers - across the full LDES lifecycle, delivering technical, economic, and regulatory insights to position the EU as a leader in LDES deployment and also providing inputs for future EU policy development as well as LDES technology scale up.

As the share of renewable energy increases, continuous intraday trading is increasing, allowing market participants to respond more effectively to forecast changes and thereby help balance the electricity grid. However, unlike the auction-based day-ahead market, the European continuous intraday market is particularly vulnerable to manipulation due to high volatility, low liquidity, and limited cross-border transmission capacity. Practices such as capacity hoarding undermine the efficiency of existing infrastructure, raise costs for renewable producers who cannot balance their positions, distort long-term investment signals, and ultimately increase prices for consumers. This project aims to document these effects and provide insights to make European market design more robust and future-proof.

The Nordic grid is rapidly transitioning to renewable generation, creating high volatility, stronger cross-border dependencies, and rising operational risks. Siloed national practices lead to inefficiencies, costly redundancies, and barriers to renewable integration. The project addresses this challenge by designing a unified, end-to-end coordination framework enabling existing TSO/RCC models and tools to work seamlessly together across borders and time frames. This holistic approach closes the loop across system boundaries, time frames, incentives, and validation processes through four innovations: (1) a common modelling language, aligning modeling inputs and assumptions to support better-informed decisions (2) an end-to-end decision support pipeline, finding system-wide optimal actions across all stages and control areas; (3) incentive-compatible mechanisms, ensuring TSOs are satisfied with these solutions and want to implement them; and (4) a validation and reproducibility framework that accelerates adoption and builds trust, ensuring all Stakeholders can implement these methodologies and unlock their benefits. By enabling safer, cheaper, and cleaner cross-border flows, and efficient use of shared infrastructures, the project will facilitate the reliable and cost-effective integration of renewable sources, supporting the region’s ability to act as Europe’s green energy hub.

With increasing digitalization, the coordination of the energy system is becoming more complex and increasingly data-dependent. The Data Unlocked project aims to develop secure and intelligent IT communication solutions that enable real-time energy data to be shared without compromising data quality or consumer privacy. Using machine learning-based data anonymization techniques, only essential information is shared, allowing for better forecasts, infrastructure optimization, and support for flexibility services. The project has received DKK 9.4 million from the Smart Energy and Digitalization funding pool and is led by DTU.

The transition from energy systems based on fossil fuels to renewables introduces a tremendous challenge concerning balancing of the power system. The main sources of electricity production become weather-dependent and hence intermittent, and planning of the daily operation of the electricity system will increasingly rely on forecasts. The uncertainty will propagate through the system as forecast errors, which introduces large variations in the need for balancing reserves to maintain stable operation of the power system and ensure the security of supply. Dynamic and multi-area reserve dimensioning is needed to reduce system costs for balancing reserves while maintaining a high level of security of supply in an energy system dominated by renewables.

The project supports the EU Hydrogen Strategy by laying the groundwork for a hydrogen market and helping stakeholders develop effective strategies to participate. This will boost engagement, green technology development, and growth in Denmark’s green sector, benefiting manufacturers and renewable energy producers. It also contributes to EU goals, potentially creating a million jobs, attracting up to €470 billion in investments, and reducing CO2 emissions in sectors like transport and industry.

This project assesses the market potential for hydrogen and green fuels and their implications for the European electricity market. As such, it focuses on both, the short-term operations of PtX assets on different electricity markets (spot and balancing power), as well as the long-term market design, and regulation of green hydrogen/fuels and biofuels to support the deployment of PtX serving the industrial and transportation demands throughout Europe.

ViPES2X develops bidding strategy decision-making tools for virtual power plants (including storage systems and electrolyzers) based on batch and online learning techniques. Target markets are trading platforms for hydrogen, as well as day-ahead and balancing power markets, and TSO ancillary service markets.

HOMEY aims to design market-based operational models for a system, including power-to-X assets (such as electrolyzers and hydrogen storage systems), renewable assets (such as wind and PV) as well as battery energy storage systems. While properly coping with different sources of uncertainty, the goal is to determine the optimal bidding strategy in potential target markets, such as power, ancillary service, and hydrogen markets. We envision to verify and demonstrate the performance of our operational models in a real pilot in Denmark belonging to Siemens Gamesa.

This project models the operating region of power-to-X assets such as electrolyzers and hydrogen tanks in a convex manner as accurate as possible. It then develops a stochastic investment model, determining the optimal investment decisions in those assets from Ørsted's perspective.

FLEX-CEC aims at unfolding the potential of Citizen Energy Communities (CEC) in Denmark and harness flexibility (FLEX) from the CEC participating citizens and businesses with flexible energy production and consumption. To do so, the CEC will be connected to the wholesale energy market through digital technologies and by close collaboration with balance responsible parties (BRP). The project consists of three distinct pilots in Denmark, each with its own characteristics in terms of governance, participants, and energy setup. The research and development activities on technical and market aspects feed into three pilots.

This project designs incentive models for investment, enabling IBM to attract demand-side flexibility resources and produce various frequency-related ancillary services, particularly mFRR and FCR.

This project models uncertainty propagation among energy sectors accounting for the physics laws of energy flow, and designs energy markets which are aware of the systemic risk of the whole interconnected multi-energy system.

Smart4RES aims to substantially improve the entire model and value chain in renewable energy prediction by proposing the next generation of RES forecasting models, enabling an increase of at least 15% in RES forecasting performance. In particular, we focus on designing data markets, incentivizing wind farms to exchange data and improve their forecasts. Read more here.

CORE explored and designed various market-based solutions for improving the coordination of heat, power and natural gas markets in Denmark.

EnergyLab Nordhavn – New Urban Energy Infrastructures developed and demonstrated future energy solutions. The project utilized and consolidated Copenhagen’s Nordhavn as a full-scale smart city energy lab and demonstrated how electricity and heating, energy-efficient buildings and electric transport can be integrated into an intelligent, flexible, and optimized energy system. Read more here.