TSC TSOs celebrate their new Joint Office in Munich

• Employees of the members of the Transmission System Operator Security Cooperation (TSC) move into made-to-measure premises of the TSC TSOs - Joint Office
• Higher efficiency and better quality due to closer coordination and collaboration.

Today representatives of TSC Transmission System Operators (TSC TSOs) met in Munich (Germany) to inaugurate the Grand Opening of the TSC TSOs – Joint Office in the presence of regulatory authorities and partner bodies. The office in its brand-new configuration has been tailored to the needs of the TSC TSOs. It is the place of work for 15 experts from the participating TSOs to perform back-to-back advanced 24/7 tasks to manage TSC TSOs’ expanding operations and to ensure the high level of electricity system security in Europe day and night. Their key tasks are to call attention to data quality, to maintain stable operation of the TSC TSOs’ IT-tools and to provide input for the development of new processes for the operational planning and security analyses performed by the TSC TSOs. Data from all participating control areas are collected and automatically merged by the TSC TSOs – not only from the 10 countries of the TSC TSOs, but also from 14 other continental European countries. Based on these improved data sets, TSC TSOs access contingency forecasts and discuss the results in a daily conference call with each other and CORESO.

“The Joint Office gives us the opportunity to share experience of the operational planning staff of the transmission system operators in order to better understand what is going on in the transnational grid. This is a huge step forward in the cooperation among the transmission system operators in order to be able to manage the new challenges” says Ben Voorhorst, Chief Operating Officer at TenneT, the Dutch-German TSO.

Working place and information hub
"Our Joint Office is both a working place and an information hub," says Alexander Wirth, TSC’s Operational Manager, coming from Swissgrid. “For one thing we get our jobs done more efficiently, for another thing we develop new cooperation areas due to a much closer coordination and collaboration and have direct contact with the colleagues from various TSC TSOs. This will improve the security of power supply on an ongoing basis.”

The Joint Office commenced operations in Munich in July, but had to use provisional rooms. Now there are more than 260 sqm specially tailored for the needs of the experts working there. In parallel, TSC TSOs have successfully started the new 24/7 rolling Intraday Congestion Forecast (IDCF). Today, cooperation becomes more and more important for grid security assessment and capacity calculation since TSOs have to man-age increasing challenges (integration of renewables, delayed grid development, imperfect market mechanisms) maintaining the required security of supply. Unchanged, the responsibility for grid operation planning, grid operation and security of supply remains decentralised with the individual TSC TSO.

TSO Security Cooperation
The Transmission System Operator Security Cooperation (TSC) was launched in December 2008 as an initiative of equal partners with a de-centralized approach to foster regional European cooperation for system security in the countries concerned and in the whole of Europe. Its members are 50Hertz, Amprion (both Germany), APG (Austria), ?EPS (Czech Republic), ELES (Slovenia), http://Energinet.dk (Denmark), HOPS (Croatia), PSE (Poland), swissgrid (Switzerland), TenneT TSO (Germany), TenneT TSO (The Netherlands), TransnetBW (Germany) and one observer, MAVIR (Hungary). The involved TSOs set up a permanent TSO Security Panel (group of security experts), new cooperation tools for control centres and a common IT platform CTDS for data exchange and performing common n-1 security assessments. TSC TSOs’ main goal is to further enhance operational cooperation amongst TSOs in order to ensure keeping a high level of overall system security in the European electricity grid. TSC TSOs are open to the participation of other TSOs.