“Virtual Power Plant integration and test bench for railway Smart Grid applied to stationary Energy Storage Systems and Stations”

SNCF, the French railway company aims to reduce its impact on the grid and participate to new energy businesses. To do so, the implementation of Virtual Power Plants has been studied to identify the opportunities for the railway infrastructures and more specifically stationary Energy Storage Systems (ESS). The goal is to add Demand-Response (DR) capabilities to this system with a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) aggregating the available power to enable flexibility and real-time valorization on the energy market. Before deploying the VPP, a test environment must be developed. A detailed model of the site has been made in laboratory environment and runs on a HIL platform allowing real-time operations and realistic decisions on VPP side. The communication is ensured by a standard IoT protocol allowing fast and secure data transmission. Finally, the energy market and Transmission System Operator (TSO) offers for DR are emulated, along with the SIGALi’s model and provides tailored results for best profits.