Successful offline validation of TECNALIA’s EMS in the first use case of the Portuguese Pilot!

Apr 7

TECNALIA has successfully carried out the off-line validation of the Energy Management System (EMS) developed for the Portuguese Pilot. This was the objective of Milestone M5, “Offline validation of Tools“, of the ELEXIA project which aimed to assess the performance of each tool individually before their integration at the demonstration site.

The tool, which is based on optimization algorithms, determines the day-ahead optimal operation schedules of the energy resources to minimize overall energy costs or to provide flexibility services to grid operators under the different use cases defined for the Portuguese Pilot. Specifically, off-line tests focused on validating the application of the EMS in the first use case of the Portuguese Pilot, “Prosumer Office buildings Energy Management“, aimed at optimizing the operation of the flexible energy resources at the APS (Port of Sines Authority) premises according to cost minimization criteria. The available energy resources include three office buildings with climatization systems, five electric vehicles and chargers, and one photovoltaic system.

To this end, a realistic case study based on data from the Port of Sines was simulated using the EMS for three different price scenarios:

flat tariff,
time-of-use (ToU) tariff for a MV customer inthe Portuguese power system and
day-ahead (DA) energy market prices.

The results demonstrated the feasibility of the developed EMS to estimate the available flexibility of the energy resources and optimize their operation to minimize overall electricity costs.

Currently, TECNALIA is immerse in the off-line validation of the next use case of the Portuguese Pilot, which focuses on the optimal energy management of the LiquefiedNatural Gas (LNG) plant located at the Port of Sines. To feed the flexibility model developed for this energy resource and define a realistic case study for the off-line validation of the EMS, actual operational data from the LNG plant provided by REN (Redes Energéticas Nacionais) is being analyzed.

Once TECNALIA’s EMS and the remaining tools involved in the Portuguese Pilot have been successfully validated off-line for all use-cases, the next step will be theirinstallation at the pilot site and the validation of their joint performance with actual data. This is expected to be certified by Milestone M6, “Tools and systems installed and ready to run”, in September 2025.