Turkey Smart Grids 2023 Vision and Strategy Roadmap launched at ICSG 2018

Operated under the leadership of Republic of Turkey Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EMRA) and the coordination of Association of Electricity Distribution System Operators (ELDER), "Turkey Smart Grids 2023 Vision and Strategy Roadmap Project - TAS 2023” was launched during the 6th International Istanbul Smart Grids and Cities Congress and Fair, which was held on April 25 and 26 in Istanbul Congress Center.

Former Vice President of EMRA Mehmet Ertürk, Chairman of ELDER Serhat Çeçen, Chairman of GAZBIR Yaşar Arslan and AF Consulting Turkey Country Manager Serhat Can participated to the launch meeting.

The roadmap for Turkey’s transition to smart grids was prepared by analyzing the current status of 21 DSOs throughout the country. The distribution companies were asked questions and major problems in the sector were determined as follows:

• Challenges in following the smart grid project
• Scale of pilot schemes
• Lack of platforms that best practices and know-how can be shared
• Need for human resource to integrate digital technologies into power system
• Lack of practice for corporate integration
• Ineffective management of big-scale data
• Insufficient utilization of big data in decision-making processes
• Insufficient proliferation of remote control and intervention infrastructure

Following the determination of the problems, DSOs were told to specify their own needs about smart grids and present their work on what they want to do to EMRA until 2020.

Rate of loss and illegal use will drop below 8%

At the first stage, a roadmap covering the years 2021 – 2025 will be revealed; then the necessary work to achieve 2035 goals will be determined.

• In line with the goals for 2035, following actions will be taken:
• Forming a national grid communication platform and making 80% of the customers to use smart meters
• Procurement of smart meters and communication units from national sources
• Development of a distribution network infrastructure, which is supported by small-scale, distributed and renewable resources
• Increasing the number of solar panels to at least one million and forming the required infrastructure to integrate it to the power network
• Decreasing the rate of loss and illegal use to 8%

Benefit of smart grids will be higher than its cost

At his speech, Ertürk stated that major criteria is obtaining a benefit with smart grid transition, which is higher than its cost and those smart technologies will be adopted as long as their costs are low enough.

ELDER Chairman Serhat Çeçen said that the project is bringing additional responsibilities to distribution companies and the most important objective is to maximize the customer satisfaction and make the system more measurable.

Source : www.elder.org.tr/ebulten/issue68.html#news1