During its Board of Directors meeting in Brussels the 31 May, EDSO for Smart
Grids was pleased to welcome PPC SA from Greece, Stromnetz Steiermark
GmbH from Austria and Enea Operator sp. from Poland as new members. Mr.
Per-Olof Granström was officially appointed Secretary General of EDSO for
Smart Grids.
EDSO for Smart Grids welcomes the recently issued EC Communication “Smart
Grids: from Innovation to Deployment”. Besides their basic role as network
providers DSOs have a natural role as market facilitators; enabling active
demand, distributed generation, charging of Electric Vehicles, local balancing
and information exchange. EDSO for Smart Grids also strongly supports the
introduction of regulatory incentives for investments as necessary drivers
toward smart grids economic viability and deployment. “New technologies need
to be tested to establish cost-effective solutions that can work under real-life
working conditions, characteristics of new technologies once integrated into the
system, different technology priorities due to local conditions, customer
reaction and possible challenges and barriers to overcome. For this, further
projects and European financing is urgent” commented the Chairman of the
EDSO for Smart Grids Board of Directors, Livio Gallo.
As regards policy, EDSO for Smart Grids invites the European Commission to
pursue a balanced approach to foster the development of a transparent and
open market without creating distortions that could endanger the development
of smart grids in the long-term perspective. “With the scope to better
investigate the evolving role of the DSO in the smart grids environment EDSO
for Smart Grids is launching working groups leveraging on the knowledge of its
members to explore the best available solutions for controlling/dispatching
distributed generation, application of storage devices, operating recharging
infrastructure for electric vehicles, gathering and managing smart metering
data and enabling active demand and customer participation” commented the
Secretary General of EDSO for Smart Grids, Per-Olof Granström.
EDSO for Smart Grids, representing 25 leading Distribution System Operators
in 16 countries in the EU – amounting to approx. 134 million points of supply,
will in close cooperation with the European Commission and the European
electricity industry monitor and contribute to moving Smart Grids from vision
to reality.