Resources and technologies

The system operator that is procuring services needs to know details about the actual technologies that controllable units and service providing groups consists of. This is to aid the system operator in evaluating the resources to ensure safe operation and their delivery capabilites.

The Network Code on Demand Response (NCDR) has provisions regarding this, even tho a fundamental principle is "technology neutrality". There are multiple provisions that require a flexibility information system to be able to store and distribute information on the technologies of the resources, for example (our emphasis in bold):

"whilst having due regard to the particularities of demand response, energy storage, distributed generation and demand curtailment" - Article 3
"the procuring system operator in coordination with the service provider shall [...] evaluate its technical characteristics in comparison with the corresponding product requirements" - Article 20
"controllable units that are identical to controllable units [...] previously prequalified by any SP for the relevant product [...] the procuring system operator shall simplify the evaluation" - Article 20
"make public a non-confidential version of the flexibility information system including at least data on the service providers and the total capacity prequalified or verified per technology" - Article 26
"Rules for market-based procurement [...] shall take into account particularities of the different resources" - Article 32

Devices for detecting duplicates

Information about the technology can also aid in avoiding duplicate registrations of specific resources. But, a more robust ways of avoiding duplicates is to register uniquely identifiable devices, such as inverters, chargers etc. that might have a unique serial number. To do that, we must register a minimum of information about the device.

Type - The type of device, such as inverter, hvac, evcharger
Make - The manufacturer.
Model - well... the model
Business ID - A business identifier for the device, e.g. a serial number or MAC address.
Business ID type - The type of business identifier used (serial_number, mac, or other).

Categories and technologies for statistics and characteristics

There is a need to categorise controllable units into three main categories. The reason for this is:

In Norwegian balancing markets, each service providing group must only contain one of these categories.
Statistical purposes.

The categories are are.

Statnett (EN)	Statnett (NO)	NCDR name	Emoji
consumption	forbruk	demand	🏠
production	produksjon	generation	⚡
energy storage	energilager	energy storage	🔋

We believe that rather than registering the categories themselves, we can register the underlying technologies, and derive the category from them.

This will make the registration very specific for service providers as they only have to register "what they have". The approach has several other advantages:

makes the data more valuable as we can get more insight into what technologies are being utilised.
allows for registering controllable units with multiple technologies, such as smart homes (water heater, electric vehicle, heat pump) or data centers (battery, backup generator, other consumption)
simpler for service provider to register since they only need to know the technology, not how to categorize it
deriving the category on both CU and SPG level is possible
monitoring and reporting statistics on the use of different technologies in the market can be done

Technologies can be categorized in a hierarchy. The hierarchy is inspired by Standard for næringsgruppering (SN). We want to use the same approach as SSB is taking with SN.

Breaking down into smaller subtechnologies only when it is actually relevant for some purpose.
Classifying based on the main technology (ref. "viktigste aktivitet" in SN)

We have used emojis to indicate the categories. When registering resources that are not covered by the classification, the service provider can use the "other" technologies. By monitoring the use of these, we can learn more about the technologies that are not yet covered, and decide if they should be added as new technologies.

Hydropower ⚡
- Pumped 🔋
- Run-of-river ⚡
Heat power plant ⚡
- Combined heat and power (CHP) ⚡
Solar ⚡
Wind ⚡
Backup generator ⚡
HVAC 🏠
- Heat 🏠
- Heat pump 🏠
Lighting 🏠
Hot water heater 🏠
Boiler 🏠
Electric vehicle charger 🏠
- Vehicle to grid (V2G) 🔋
Battery 🔋
Other consumption 🏠
Other production ⚡
Other energy storage 🔋

Note

We want to avoid registering specific technologies for things that should rather be based on other information elements. A couple of examples are:

EV chargers - distinguishing between home and fast chargers should be based on the maximum active power and/or accounting point consumption type, not the technology.
Hydropower - having specific "technologies" for small-, mini- and micro-hydro.

Users will be able to select multiple technologies for each technical resource. This allows for more accurate registration of resources with multiple technologies such as hybrid inverters and smart homes.

Case - hybrid inverters

Consider a consumer with a solar panel and a battery. This consumer can have one of the following setups:

AC-coupled: the solar panel and battery are connected to the grid through separate inverters. Both inverters can be controlled as a unit, but they are technically separate resources.
DC-coupled: the solar panel and battery are connected to the grid through the same, hybrid, inverter.

If the inverter is the thing that is registered, then it will be challenging to set one "technology" for the device. This calls for it being possible to set multiple technologies per device?

Maximum active power as size

In addition to storing information about the technology, we also need to store the maximum active power that the flexible resources can provide. We store this information on multiple levels, with slightly different meaning on each level. The table below gives a meaning to the maximum active power on each level.

Level	Description	Example
Technical resource	Maximum active power ("merkeeffekt") of the specific unit	7kW car charger
Controllable unit	Maximum flexible active power	Car charging site of 10 x 7kW car chargers discounted to 15kW flexibility
Service providing group	Maximum flexible active	10 x 15kW car charging site discounted to 40kW flexibility
Service providing group product application	Maximum active power that can be offered in the market	40kW car charging able to deliver 30kW sustained

Regulation and energy direction

The regulation direction (up/down) does not have to be stored on each device. It is the overall regulation direction of the controllable unit that is relevant. It is therefore stored on the controllable unit itself.

The energy direction to and from the grid is already available on the accounting point. See below. Some information about the energy direction can also be derived from the technology and category.

Accounting point information

All controllable units are connected to accounting points. The Norwegian Datahub Elhub has information about the energy direction of the accounting point as well as consumption/production types.

Metering Point Type i.e. energy direction
Production Type
Consumption Type

For consumption, Elhub also has information about the consumer, such as NACE and Consumption code Code.

Example

Datacenter accounting point could look like this.

Metering Point Type: Consumption
Consumption Type: Consumption
NACE code: 63.100 - Data processing, hosting and related activities
Controllable unit
- Derived technology categories:
  - Consumption 🏠
  - Production ⚡
  - Energy storage 🔋
- Technology: Other consumption 🏠
- Category: Consumption 🏠
- Maximum active power (flexible): 100 kW
- Regulation direction: Both
- Technical resources
  - Technology: Battery 🔋, maximum active power: 120 kW
  - Technology: Backup generator ⚡, maximum active power: 150 kW
  - Technology: Other consumption 🏠, maximum active power: 400 kW