Power systems undergo massive operational and technological changes amid increasing demand for environmental sustainability and energy efficiency. The traditional, supplydriven approach, relying on large-scale generation plants, which has dominated old utilities, is reconsidered to incorporate the increased penetration of variable renewable energy sources, distributed generation and storage. Demand Response is an important instrument for improving energy efficiency, since it increases consumers' engagement and provides a mechanism to reduce or shift consumption, resulting in energy savings. Regulators and policy makers in several European countries take substantial measures to encourage market uptake of Demand Response as a means to mitigate the limitations of the existing grid and boost the transition to a low carbon economy. This goes hand in hand with the deployment of services by stakeholders who aggregate consumption flexibility and offer it to grid operators or to the electricity market. Several large-scale pilot projects explore the feasibility of Demand Response in residential and small commercial customers. This paper provides an overview of the current regulatory and policy framework in Europe and summarizes the state of play of commercial and pilot Demand Response deployments in various European countries. Also, it highlights some key research objectives associated with Demand Response.

Demand Response (DR) gains widespread support in the EU, as reflected in regulatory initiatives that encourage its market uptake and in the numerous pilot deployments that investigate its impact and acceptance. DR facilitates the cost-efficient integration of renewable energy sources and can contribute on reduced CO2 emissions. Also, it is beneficial for the electricity users, offering them financial incentives for reshaping their electricity consumption pattern. A key player in the realization of DR is the DR Aggregator. To accomplish its business objectives, this stakeholder needs ICT tools that support forecasting of the amount and flexibility of consumption, optimal planning of the flexibility of aggregated assets, baseline calculation and participation verification for settlement and billing purposes, and strategic positioning of the aggregated flexibility in the markets. Much of the innovation of these tools is focused on the components that analyze the flexibility portfolio and dynamically calculate proper incentives that ensure profitability for the DR Aggregator. This paper presents our approach for a Demand Response Management System and details the devised aggregated flexibility forecasting algorithms. It also presents a policy for optimal allocation of load curtailment/enhancement targets to DR programs and enrolled customers and analyses the rationale behind this policy.

The European plan on climate change consists of a range of measures to fight against climate change, one of which is to reach 20% of renewable energy in the total energy consumption in the EU by 2020. The increasing penetration of RES and DG introduces new business cases which require innovative ICT tools and the support of appropriate communication infrastructure. This paper focuses on the Virtual Power Plant and Demand Response cases, proposing a general architecture as well as analyzing core functionalities, information and communication requirements, along with relative standards and technologies. The architectural analysis is based on the SGAM framework, a standardized architecture for smart grid solutions and services that allows new distribution grid players to participate in the energy markets and contribute to an optimal grid operation. The document presents the realized use cases' modeling and gives an overview of the pilots in which the proposed models will be materialized and validated.

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This article presents the H2020 project RESOLVD (Renewable Penetration Levered by Efficient LowVoltage Distribution Grids). The purpose of this project is to improve the efficiency of distribution networks at the same time while increasing the hosting capacity of distributed renewable generation by introducing flexibility by storage management and control in the low voltage grid. This paper collects the most significant insights from the RESOLVD project by summarizing the needs and expectations of the involved stakeholders to give a complete understanding of the context of the project. Subsequently, the RESOLVD technology is presented, both the software as well as the hardware solutions. Next, the existing and upcoming regulation initiatives are presented and analyzed. Finally, the conclusions of the project and recommendations to standardizing and regulatory bodies are provided.

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Distribution System Operators face a challenging environment largely affected by the ever-growing integration of Distributed Energy Resources. Especially, Electric Vehicles have a rapidly growing presence in the distribution grids, being both a challenge, but also an enabler for active network management. This work analyses the operation of charging infrastructures in coordination with the DSO in the context of the FEVER project. The objective of the project is to exploit control of power flow through DC/AC converters towards demand management and voltage compensation. The paper describes the different modules required to coordinate this operation in a flexibility market context. DSO support tools have been developed to forecast possible critical events and prepare a mitigation plan leveraging flexibility. Response to this flexibility demand is covered by Vehicleto-Grid charging stations, equipped with DC converters, capable of implementing flexibility strategies.

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