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An Interview with RENN Solutions

December 23, 2022

RENN Solutions is an innovative SME developing and implementing its own core technology in the Smart Energy domain. With its own R&D, strategic international partners and a unique exploitation approach called developmental engineering, we are co-creating the energy system of the future.

 

RENN’s energy optimisation solutions are based on its AI-based data management system, AURORA. What makes AURORA stand out from other similar systems?

 

The most important characteristic of the AURORA integrated system is complete end-to-end automation. That means that every action, from local process control to the optimisation of the aggregate and exploitation of the results – extracted flexibility – is performed autonomously by the system, using AI algorithms and accumulated historical data. Combining automation with an efficient forecasting engine in the control loop (the decisions are made on short-term forecasts, rather than measured values as those are not available yet; this way, the systemic delay is zero), the system can respond close-to-real-time, making it particularly relevant for local use cases, where fast and localised response is required. In this way, congestion avoidance rather than congestion mitigation can be achieved, and grid balancing of time-critical transients is possible.

 

The other important aspect of the AURORA solution is its modular structure, which is based on unit roles and processes of the extended Harmonized Electricity Market Role Model (HEMR). Such a structure ensures systemic scalability and interoperability, but also replicability of systems with similar structures (scaling up or down is fully supported due to unit roles).

 

The energy system is dynamic and interdependent across different vectors and networks. Managing/optimising only a portion of the system ends in local optima, which can be in conflict with global optimum. Only vertically nested systems, by being mutually non-conflicting, allow for holistic optimisation of all levels and stakeholders, while the bottom-up approach ensures solving problems where they occur. Our technology follows the approach of vertically nested systems by establishing local dynamic markets, based on the real situation on the grid. These markets take into account the multi-dimensional physical nature, such as inter-dependencies with other energy vectors, the topological location of the issue to be mitigated and the flexibility injection point, etc.

 

The bottom-up approach, tightly anchored in the physical energy flows, coupled with open-source flexibility trading algorithms and abstraction protocols (FlexOffer), allows for mathematically efficient aggregation and disaggregation of flexible energy from any type of device/system. With advanced properties like fine-grained topological location and multi-vector trade, AURORA dynamically creates aggregated digital products for several different use cases in parallel.

 

RENN states on its website that it believes “hydrogen is a key element in the future electricity system.” How does AURORA facilitate the integration and operation of hydrogen technology?

 

Only in recent years hydrogen-based technologies have begun gaining recognition, mainly due to new developments and improvements, as well as environmental awareness and green transformation. There are many use cases for hydrogen-as-a-product, however, our focus is anchored on hydrogen as a carrier in the multi-vector energy networks.

 

In a multi-vector local environment, hydrogen is produced from intermittent renewable sources. Already at the production step, AURORA optimises the production process based on the real-time local situation in the grid, ensuring optimum techno-socio-economic impact for production. The produced hydrogen is stored temporarily, depending on the needs/constraints of the local process. This is the next coupling of our concept, linking hydrogen to the demand process, which can be demand load (e.g. glass factory or energy community), heating facility, grid storage system, etc. On this level, AURORA optimises multi-dimensional processes, taking into account external (e.g. grid) and internal (process) constraints. Sector-coupled optimisation takes into account also heat recuperation and local oxygen consumption, greatly increasing the efficiency of the whole chain. The result of local optimisation is the remainder of flexibility, which is traded on the AURORA marketplace for next-level use cases, such as grid congestion management and intra-day markets.

 

In our approach (also termed Hydrogen Prosumer), the benefits of a hydrogen-based system, such as flexible response time and decoupled power and energy, are recognised and exploited fully (value stacking). Local sector-coupled units furthermore reduce the need for the transport of energy over large distances, which in the case of hydrogen also means the reduction of compression losses and investments into transport facilities.

 

Part of the award from PLATOON was an invitation to join the Technology Transfer Programme. How do you feel this has benefitted your company?

 

Technology diffusion happens in both directions, based on the maturity and roles of different components that form a system. Our technology is becoming mature, and we identified a need to first try and then showcase the system in an operational environment. For AURORA, capacity and reliability are the most important metrics, and both are influenced by the number of different processes the system can integrate and optimise. With every new demonstration environment, new processes and devices are introduced. After a successful demonstration of those, the list of supported assets increases (interoperability) and, with it, the value of the system for the end customer. The heterogeneous nature of the pilot and the support from the mentoring team were the biggest benefits of the Technology Transfer Programme.

 

What inspired your company to enter PLATOON’s second Open Call?

 

PLATOON’s open and interoperable architecture resonated well with our vertically nested system of systems approach; therefore, we expected strong synergy on the conceptual level. This has been proven true already at the beginning when we performed full instantiation of PLATOON’s architecture with our technological modules.

 

Another important inspiration was the available demonstration cases. The microgrid environment with many different assets for optimisation was seen as an interesting challenge for our technology. It revealed some very interesting use cases for trials, such as peer-to-peer automated flexibility exchange and DSO congestion service provision.