For the first time in Italy, resource aggregators participating in the UVAM project can use Equigy’s Crowd Balancing Platform to register and pre-qualify their flexibility resources for the supply of ancillary services to the electricity system.

Since 2017, Terna has been engaged in the development of pilot projects to include the distributed resources in the ancillary services market, i.e. services that are necessary to guarantee the security of the entire electricity system. Among these, the UVAM (virtually aggregated mixed units) project which from November 2018 has enabled the services market, in the same aggregates, consumption and production units and storage systems.
Through UVAM, potentially any flexibility resource (e.g. domestic storage, loads and small plants), regardless of size, can participate in the service market through aggregation in resource pools. Certainly a success, with over 1,500 MW of “new” qualified resources on the dispatching services market.

In the latest annual forward capacity procurement auction through UVAM, Terna assigned a total of 425 MW of flexibility assets for 2022. Starting today, this capacity can also be made available to the electricity system through the Equigy blockchain-based platform, which aims to encourage the participation of new distributed resources in the dispatching services markets and to facilitate the work of BSPs (Balancing Service Providers), in managing flexible asset portfolios which will be increasingly numerous in the future. The decarbonisation of the Electricity System requires the enabling of an increasingly wide range of flexibility resources, to make up for the progressive decommissioning of fossil fuel plants.

Terna, as driver of the energy transition, will continue in its commitment to support the evolution of the flexibility markets and intends to make new functions available during 2022 also on the basis of the feedback provided by the Early Adopters, to expand the operations of the platform and aim to gradually implement it in all interactions between Terna and the stakeholders involved.