With the International Grid Control Cooperation (IGCC), a European platform has been created that balances opposing demands for secondary control energy across Europe (imbalance netting) and thus greatly reduces the actually necessary activation of secondary control reserves. More than 12 years ago, the cooperation was introduced as a regional project in Germany and has since been expanded to 22 European TSOs. APG has been a member of the International Grid Control Cooperation since April 2014. As of the end of March 2023, IGCC is now complete with the accession of the transmission system operator ESO and thus the connection of ADMIE.
This means that the first of the four mandatory European control reserve optimisation platforms has fully implemented all accessions. In addition to IGCC for imbalance netting, PICASSO for secondary control, MARI for tertiary control and TERRE for replacement reserves will follow - the latter, however, is not used in Austria. APG is one of the first users of all relevant platforms.
One of the main tasks of a TSO is to keep the system frequency of 50 hertz stable throughout. In case of deviations, the frequency is stabilised with the activation of negative or positive control reserves (reduction or increase of the amount of energy in the system) and returned to 50 hertz. After primary control reserves are activated fully automatically in the entire synchronous zone, secondary control reserves are in turn automatically activated to achieve this goal. If two or more TSOs have opposing demands for control energy due to different situations in the respective control zones, the demand can be balanced via IGCC in real time and the opposing activation of secondary control energy can be greatly reduced. The availability of cross-border grid capacities must also be taken into account here.
In 2022, approximately 790 million euros in activation costs could be avoided and thus saved within the cooperation by means of IGCC. With the focus on energy, the activation of secondary control reserves totalling 11,240 GWh was avoided within the cooperation in the same period - of which approx. 600 GWh or approx. 60% of the demand for secondary control reserves in Austria. IGCC thus contributes directly to security of supply: by keeping secondary control reserves free, a larger pool is available at all times to keep the system frequency stable.
The completion of the cooperation shows that Europe-wide cooperation is possible and quite successful and beneficial for the TSOs involved.