The European Interpreter Project consortium meets in Granada for its 5th General Assembly
Interpreter is developing an innovative modular platform for efficient management of electrical grids.
The open-source platform opens up new opportunities for grid operators to run tools that optimise the design, planning, operation and maintenance of the grid.
This H2020 project is funded by the European Commission (GA No. 864360) and consists of nine partners from Spain, Portugal, Greece, Denmark, Belgium and France.
Representatives of the partners responsible for bringing the project – which began to take shape almost three years ago – to a successful conclusion gathered in Granada on 29 March for the fifth and final General Assembly before its final presentation to the European Commission in September of this year.
The renewable energy boom and the associated distributed generation has changed the electrical grid operating paradigm. While this change has brought new opportunities for grid planning, operation and control, it is also presenting new challenges. In particular, the new distributed energy sources challenge the efficiency and flexibility of electrical grids, which means that DSOs are faced with increasingly complex grid planning and operation processes to avoid losses and ensure that their users receive a good-quality power supply. Interpreter will help to overcome the constraints imposed by existing tools by means of a modular network management solution with specific focus on the distribution grid. The tool will be offered to grid operators on an open-source software platform.
After two years of restrictions associated with the pandemic during which project update events were conducted online by teleconference, Granada was selected by the working group as the venue for this important Assembly. Cuerva, as a project partner with part of its Láchar distribution network acting as a demo-site, is responsible for testing and validating the tools developed in the project and also hosted the event at the Granada Chamber of Commerce.
Ignacio Cuerva, CEO of the company, welcomed the consortium members and kicked off a crowded agenda that included a review of the progress in the various work packages over the last six months, the current state of the project and the goals, planning and measures to be taken into account as the project enters the home stretch. The Interpreter project consortium, funded by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 program, consists of partners from Spain (Cartif, Atos, Circe), Portugal (R&D Nester), Greece (Certh), Denmark (DTU), Belgium (Ores) and France (Euroquality). The common goal of their work is to develop a network-modelling tool the utility of which will be demonstrated with 10 applications at three pilot sites (two real distribution networks and a network laboratory).
A testing facility in Granada
Cuerva will lead the activities at the Spanish demo-site in the municipal district of Láchar in Granada where the network is managed by Cuerva and also forms part of the Living Lab*. This demo site includes a 20-kV/400 V distribution substation with 11 transformer substations and 270 supply points that include various prosumers connected to the network. In order to obtain real-time data from the grid, Cuerva began – and continues to carry out – digitalisation of the entire distribution network, in particular the area from the substation to the point of supply.
The algorithms developed in the Interpreter project will be tested and validated in this part of the network. algorithms that will assist and support a DSO like Cuerva to actively manage its network, improve critical indicators such as non-technical losses and perform predictive maintenance of assets and network configuration to improve the balance between loads and generation.
To be more specific, the grid modelling tool (GmT) has been applied to automatic creation of digital twins. Consequently, we have been able to update our network inventory and map the meters’ phase connection, all of which provides essential information to obtain an accurate grid model that faithfully simulates the network’s real behaviour.
Interpreter and the Sustainable Development Goals
Of the seventeen goals set by the United Nations' 2030 Agenda, Interpreter particularly contributes to SDG 7: to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
The tools developed by Interpreter will support DSOs now and in the future as a growing percentage of renewable energy enters the energy mix by facilitating efficient, reliable, clean operation of distribution grids, goals that can only be met by the transition to renewable power sources.
*Living Lab is an integrative environment in which users and producers co-create and co-innovate in an open, trusted ecosystem with the aim of adding value to the innovation process. In other words, the expression “living lab” is accompanied by a particular way of understanding and working with the phenomenon of innovation: an open, people-centred, systemic, transversal innovation model.
