What’s in the EU Clean Energy Package #2
Written by Leonardo Meeus
In this topic of the month, the author gives a teaser of the first three weeks of the FSR online training on EU Clean Energy Package
The golden decade of DSOs?
Distribution grids, the last mile of the electricity value chain, was considered a boring business. The name of their game was to fit and to forget the electricity plumbers, or the electricity cable guys. That is how we used to talk about distribution grids. These days are long gone because electricity production is becoming more local, domestic customers are becoming more active, and as a result, distribution grids are now at the centre of the attention.
This creates new issues, and that is the focus of week two of the training. The EU Clean Energy Package increases the role of DSOs in areas like active network management, network planning and network codes. It also clarifies the role of DSOs in data management and limits their role in the development of electric vehicle charging infrastructure and energy storage. The package also foresees the creation of an EU DSO entity similar to ENTSO-E.
You could say that this will become the golden decade of DSOs, if they manage to live up to the expectations, which will not be easy!
In the second week of the FSR online training, we will introduce these topics. We will also highlight what the EU institutions are currently negotiating on, and refer to relevant country cases so you know the impact this reform will have.
Do you know your rights?
Let’s talk about energy democracy! That is what you can read on the website of RES-COOP, the association of energy communities. Energy democracy is not something we often discuss, actually, energy customers is not even a word we often use. Instead, we talk about consumption, or about the demand for electricity, or even worse, the load of the system. I confess, I also wrote engineering articles about the power system load and the value of lost load, instead of the willingness to pay of customers.
The EU Clean Energy Package is in that sense a game changer. It empowers customers. It has been announced as a new deal for consumers and citizens.
In week 3 you will learn about your right to self-consume what you produce, your entitlement to a smart meter and dynamic contract, and new access rights regarding your smart meter data. In addition, the package facilitates the market entry of new intermediaries that would like to help you take advantage of these rights, like aggregators and energy communities.
In the third week of the online training, we will introduce you to these topics. We will also highlight what the EU institutions are currently negotiating on, and refer to relevant country cases so you know the impact this reform will have.
Every week of the training starts with a quiz to test your knowledge. If you do not know the answer, the quiz guides you through the pages of the course text so that you can refresh your knowledge. Next, you can contribute to forum discussions. We finish every week with a one-hour live class to wrap-up and add the academic perspective on these topics.
Here are some examples of quiz questions in the second and third week.
Give it a try!
