European Transmission Network Collaboration

Through the ENTSO-E, the European NetworkOf Transmission System Operators, 43 Transmission system operators are represented in a single organisation. ENTSO-E is tasked and given legal mandates by the EU’s Third Legislative Package for the Internal Energy Market to further liberalise the electricity markets in Europe to allow for greater competition and better use of the scale of networks to deliver reliable supplies to European consumers of Electricity.

The direct objectives of ENTSO-E comprise of setting up the internal energy market, and implementing the EU’s ambitious goals of greenhouse gas reductions in which electricity generation plays a major part. Allowing for renewables to be integrated into the grid requires a lot of planning and coordination, and is most efficient in large-scale networks.

The 43 current members of ENTSO-E paint the picture of how fragmented electricity transmission in Europe is, despite the common goal of creating the world’s largest electricity market. ENTSO-E was set up to facilitate the dialogue and to work together towards common standards and objectives.

Transparancy is a key pillar within the association, and members are required by law to provide ENTSO-E with information related to generation, load, transmission, and outages through a common platform. Not only does this knowledge help with the functioning of the network; it allows for collaboration between parties outside of their networks and presents learning opportunities for all stakeholders.

As there is no true direct competition among TSOs, and each is tasked with the management of a fixed network, this collaborative space and the cooperation with one another has led to one of the most reliable and well connected grid systems in the world.

As Europe’s interconnectedness continues to grow, so too will the tasks of ENTSO-E relaying feedback and ensuring oversight of the world’s largest transmission networks. 

Technological Barriers to grid Integration

One of the major hurdles to overcome in harmonising and combining separately operating grids is making sure that the systems are compatible and that the necessary fail-safes are in place to make sure that there is not a cascading catastrophic failure of the grid. All components of the grid must operate in unison and to within set frequency parameters.

Short, localised outages occur on power systems frequently. System wide disturbances that affect many customers across a broad geographic area are rare, but they occur more frequently than a normal distribution of probabilities would predict. Electric power systems are robust and are capable of withstanding one or two contingency events, but they are fragile with respect to multiple contingency events unless the systems are readjusted between contingencies. With the shrinking margin in the current transmission system, it is likely to be more vulnerable to cascading outages than it was in the past, unless effective countermeasures are taken.

A cascade is a dynamic phenomenon that cannot be stopped by human intervention once started. It occurs when there is a sequential tripping of numerous transmission lines and generators in a widening geographic area. A cascade can be triggered by just a few initiating events, as was seen on August 14th. Power swings and voltage fluctuations caused by these initial events can cause other lines to detect high currents and low voltages that appear to be faults, even if faults do not actually exist on those other lines. Generators are tripped off during a cascade to protect them from severe power and voltage swings. Protective relay systems work well to protect lines and generators from damage and to isolate them from the system under normal and abnormal system conditions

The largest hydroelectricity plants in the world

One of the most common forms of renewable energy has, for quite a while, been hydroelectricity. Sites such as the Hoover Dam and the Three Gorges Dam have become landmarks in their own right, however, they serve a purpose that is more than what makes a great tourist attraction. Harnessing the flow of the water, great turbines convert the steady deluge into electricity which has powered the grid for over a century. Below is a listing of some of the largest dams by electricity generation capacity in the world.

Three Gorges Dam

Completed in 2008, this dam was not without controversy in its scale and the sheer size of the lake that it would create displacing many people. A total of 1084 square kilometers was flooded to be able to generate 22,500 MW of power from the Yangtze river in China.

Itaipu Dam

Straddling the border between Brazil and Paraguay, the Itaipu Dam has a capacity of 14,000 MW and comes in as the world’s second largest hydroelectric generation station.

Xiluodu

The Xiluodu project is the newest of the world’s super dams; able to generate 13,860MW of power, this dam on the Jinsha river in china was completed in 2014. China is one of the fastest growing electricity producers in the world and much of its capacity is being gained from Hydro-electricity with four of the top 10 hydroelectric power plants in the world being located in china.

Baihetan

Though this dam is not yet complete, or supplying power to the grid yet, in 2021 this dam sill overtake the Itaipu dam to become the world’s second largest hydro power plant with a capacity of 16,000 MW. Giving China the number one and number two spots.