Nowadays, the adoption of a single and unified electricity market [1] is one of the main challenges faced by Europe. Although the Western and Northern regions of Europe have been working for several years towards reaching such objective, the South-Eastern region of Europe has not followed the same roadmap and it not as advanced in this field as Western Europe. TRINITY will address this challenge in order to improve the current situation and facilitate the interconnection of South-Eastern electricity markets - among them and also within the current Multi Regional Coupling area (MRC). TRINITY will develop a set of solutions to enhance cooperation among the transmission system operators of SEE in order to support the integration of the electricity markets in the region, whilst promoting higher penetration of clean energies. This strategic goal will be driven by end-users (8 TSOs, 4 NEMOS and 1 RCC) and will be achieved through the deployment in the region of four independent, but complementary, products: T-Market Coupling Framework; T-Sentinel Toolset; T-RES Control Center and T-Coordination Platform.

CROSSBOW will propose the shared use of resources to foster cross-border management of variable renewable energies and storage units, enabling a higher penetration of clean energies whilst reducing network operational costs and improving economic benefits of RES and storage units . The objective is to demonstrate a number of different, though complementary, technologies, offering Transmission System Operators higher flexibility and robustness through: 1) A better control of exchange power at interconnection points; 2) new storage solutions – distributed and centralized-, offering ancillary services to operate Virtual Storage Plants (VSP); 3) better ICT and Communications -e.g. better network observability, enabling flexible generation and Demand Response schemas; 4) the definition of a transnational wholesale market, proposing fair and sustainable remuneration for clean energies though the definition of new business models supporting the participation of new players –i.e. aggregators - and the reduction of costs. The CROSSBOW results will be evaluated by 8 TSOs in Easter Europe, grouped to form clusters that will validate each of the projects outcomes in at least three different countries, demonstrating in all cases how CROSSBOW tackles the transnational challenges faced by these TSOs.

To achieve its energy goals EU needs to establish a geographically large market by initially improving its cross-border electricity interconnections. A geographically large market, based on imports and exports of electricity, could increase the level of competition, boost the EU’s security of electricity supply and integrate more renewables into energy markets. Electricity should, as far as possible, flow between Member States as easily as it currently flows within Member States, so as to increase sustainability potential and real competition as well as to drive economic efficiency of the energy system. To this end, FARCROSS aims to address this challenge by connecting major stakeholders of the energy value chain and demonstrating integrated hardware and software solutions that will facilitate the “unlocking” of the resources for the cross-border electricity flows and regional cooperation. The project will promote state-of-the-art technologies to enhance the exploitation/capacity/efficiency of transmission grid assets, either on the generation or the transmission level. The hardware and software solutions will increase grid observability to facilitate system operations at a regional level, exploit the full potential of transmission corridors for increased electricity flows that will facilitate transition to flow-based regional market coupling, consider cross-border connections and their specific ICT and grid infrastructure, planning to use a wide-area protection approach to ensure the safe integration of renewable energy sources into the grid, mitigate disturbances, increase power system stability. An innovative regional forecasting platform will be demonstrated for improved prognosis of renewable generation and demand response and a capacity reserves optimization tool will be tested to maximize cross-border flows. The non-harmonization of national regulation will be studied and measures will be recommended to avoid distortion of the technology benefits.