ON THE DEFINITION AND APPLICABILITY OF KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR EVALUATING THE PERFORMANCE OF SMART GRID CONCEPTS

Distributed Renewable Energy Resources (DRES) are having a growing presence in the electrical distribution system and they are one of the fundamental pillars for the achievement of the 2020 energy and climate change targets. The integration of renewables, however, entails several technical issues which could be often solved in a more efficient way than the traditional grid reinforcement strategies: in particular, the field experience has demonstrated that new technologies can be implemented in order to obtain acceptable levels of grid capacity. IGREENGrid collects the field experience in DRES integration from six large scale demonstrators located in different European countries. Their heterogeneous nature defines an environment in which a complete analysis of the benefits introduced by the smart grid solutions can be exhaustively evaluated. The role of this evaluation is assigned to the so-called Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which represent a new recognized standard in the research and innovation field of electrical networks. The document proposes an overview of the KPIs adopted by IGREENGrid for the evaluation and selection of the most promising solutions dedicated to the integration of DRES in distribution networks. Details about the adopted calculation procedures, numerical examples and applicability issues have been highlighted and discussed.