Product Abstract

Électricité de France (EDF) is member of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and participates in EPRI's Smart Grid Demonstration Initiative, which conducts regional demonstrations and supports research focused on smart grid activities related to the integration of distributed energy resources (DERs).

EDF supports the Production Répartie, Enr et MDE, Intégrées et Optimisées (PREMIO¹) demonstration project located in the south of France. This project is based on the concept of a virtual power plant, where several DERs are controlled by a unique control unit. The first period of the platform operation took place during the winter of 2010–2011. This period was mostly a testing step to set devices more accurately, further learn how DERs behave, and identify potential problems. Therefore, results should not be interpreted generally. Moreover, the low number of installed DERs is not sufficient to extrapolate to a larger scale. Consequently, it is important to note that the PREMIO platform enables a qualitative assessment of results more than a quantitative one.

The objective of this report is to give an overview of the initial results and their analysis. Both technical and economic assessment methods are explained. Technical results and their assessment method are presented for each type of DER already operating in PREMIO. Diverse information is treated, ranging from the number of individual load reductions to the variations of comfort. The technical part concludes with an analysis of aggregated results. The last section introduces two different economic assessment methods.

_{¹ A French acronym for "Integration and Optimization of Distributed Generation (DG), Demand Side Management (DSM), and Renewable Energies."}