inGenious Grid Energy flexibility for managing grid congestions

Automated energy flexibility management improves transmission and distribution grid stability, supports ancillary services and RES penetration, and expands grid capacity without expensive infrastructure upgrades..

Contact us
Energy flexibility for managing grid congestions

Challenge

Postline1

An ageing power grid combined with unpredictable DER, rapidly electrifying households and transport is regularly strained under daily or seasonal increases in demand, such as during increased occupancy of tourist accommodation or simultaneous operation of residential air conditioners during heat waves.

Solution

Postline2

inGenious Grid is installed to monitor and manage the critical resources on the grid. This includes connecting larger industrial users, distributing smart meters and plugs to individual users to harness their collective flexibility of demand to avoid exceeding operating limits of vital infrastructure, such as a transformer. By managing how many and which loads can run at the same time – based on the users’ offered flexibility – the system can prevent grid overloads, which can lead into blackouts and brownouts in the future.

Effect

Postline3

Consistent energy supply is restored to all users, removing the disruption of the residents’ daily lives due to unstable supply. Additionaly, the operator gains valuable insight into grid usage and partial control of demand, enabling them to plan infrastructural improvements in critical areas, especially those where the grid is the most congested.

Challenge

Postline1

Several users in the same distribution grid want to share resources with each other, such as virtual and battery storage, solar and other power plants, EV chargers and residual flexibility of each individual user.

Solution

Postline2

inGenious Grid can be used as a flexibility management system to aggregate and match flexibilities of all connected resources. Control systems with flexibility agent capabitilies are installed at each prosumer and added to the central management system. By automatically matching flexibility requests and offers, it satisfies one user’s additional demand for energy with the available supply from another, bypassing the need to purchase energy from the market.

Effect

Postline3

A group of users can benefit from each other’s resources, increasing their utilisation and shortening the return-on-investment period of the shared resources. Instead of being subjected to volatile market prices, the participants can generate savings by using communal resources at a negotiated price point.

Challenge

Postline1

With rapid electrification, operators must sometimes reject new expansion applications because of insufficient existing infrastructure, particularly in the case of remote locations where needed capacity was underestimated at time of construction.

Solution

Postline2

Instead of installing new transmission lines and increasing the power that can be provided from the grid, inGenious Grid can be used to optimise the demand. By connecting users in the area, the system can extract and match flexibility from existing resources. This allows for mutually beneficial adjustment of demand, which serves to flatten the consumption profile of the area, reducing power variability and therefore the maximum power needed from the grid. By installing local power supply and storage, such as solar plants and on-grid batteries, the local community can further reduce their reliance on the grid.

Effect

Postline3

By harnessing all available resources on the network and adding RES the system uncovers additional capacities of the grid without the need for expensive reinforcement of infrastructure. This can delay the investment into new equipment by several years, allowing the operator to more strategically plan the expansion on the grid, accounting for the newly acquired assets in the flexibly managed area.

Inea Ikone 2024 Ingenious 3

Improved grid
stability

Optimizes essential system services like frequency, voltage, and power load control to maintain grid stability. Using real-time analytics and predictive algorithms, the system dynamically balances supply and demand by automatically activating prosumers’ energy flexibilities. This ensures that even during peak load periods or unexpected disruptions, the grid operates within safe parameters, minimizing the risk of outages or inefficiencies.
Inea Ikone 2024 Ingenious 2

Activating users through
financial incentives

Incentivizes demand-side flexibility with a real-time trading mechanism, rewarding users for adjusting their energy consumption and generation. Users can automatically sell or purchase energy flexibility on a local market, aiding the grid while saving costs. The system accurately forecasts and deploys flexible resources, aligning prices with grid needs, turning consumer behavior into a valuable asset.
Inea Ikone 2024 Ingenious 7

Scalability and inGenious
integration

Creates a robust, interconnected ecosystem by leveraging existing behind-the-meter flexibility management systems. Nesting industrial inGenious Flex users within local distribution systems or energy communities enables the exchange of unused flexibility across the grid. DERs, residential users, and microgrids can connect to the flexible grid via devices like inGenious Cube, ensuring scalable integration at both macro and micro levels as the smart grid evolves.

Grid level demand-side
energy flexibility

inGenious Grid operates based on demand side flexibility, where consumers adjust their energy usage based on grid signals, by aggregating flexibility from loads like EV chargers, heat pumps, boilers and furnaces, compressed air systems, distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar panels, wind farms, combined heat and power, hydrogen systems, as well as virtual storage. It uses the latent flexibility in existing energy systems to emulate storage capacity without the need for physical batteries.

This ensures energy flows align with real-time grid needs, facilitating less predictable renewable integration and reducing reliance on costly peaker plants. Real-time monitoring and device control allows the system to quickly respond or predict changes, maintaining grid stability even during peak periods or unexpected events.

inGenious Grid manages flexibility from various resources, from large industrial users to residential prosumers. Advanced algorithms based on cost optimisation and forecast grid conditions deploy flexibility where and when it’s needed most.

Fotografije Duotone20

Grid Flexibility Offers En

Matching energy flexibility
offers and needs

By analysing historical energy consumption, real-time usage patterns, and other connected services, such as weather forecasts, inGenious Grid can predict when and where a mismatch between supply and demand may occur. The platform centrally monitores flexibility offered by participating users—businesses with their own flexibility systems, residential prosumers, and on-grid generation and storage. This flexibility is then matched to the grid’s needs, accounting for the price of offers to ensure cost-effective deployment.

Implemented FlexOffer protocol standardises how flexibility offers are communicated and executed, allowing interoperability with local energy management systems and matching the technical requirements of the offer: time, energy, and price. When the grid requires adjustments, inGenious Grid automatically sends control signals to manage energy flows—whether that involves reducing demand, activating on-grid storage, or shifting loads to less congested periods. This automated process allows grid operators to maintain balance and stability without the need for manual intervention, ensuring the grid adapts efficiently to changing conditions.

Making any smart grid
even smarter

inGenious Grid is suitable for a wide range of grid environments, from large-scale national transmission systems to small, self-reliant microgrids. Where the primary concern is frequency balancing, inGenious Grid uses the aggregate flexibility of many subsystems and system service providers. Stability is maintained by dynamically adjusting supply and demand in real-time, which also increases the longevity of the lines and other components by reducing deviations.

At the local distribution level, inGenious Grid is equally effective in managing the complexities of smaller, more decentralized networks. It can be deployed to manage energy communities, where multiple prosumers share resources and aim for efficient energy usage, or within microgrids focused on self-reliance and resilience. In these settings, inGenious Grid optimizes the use of local generation and storage, ensuring that energy is used to reduce dependency on external grid connections. The platform’s ability to scale and adapt to different grid sizes and configurations makes it a versatile solution for any grid environment.

Grid Body 2 En New

Key Functionalities

Inea Ingenious Ik Funkc 1 4

Grid monitoring and data collection

Continuously collecting real-time data across the entire grid captures the condition of energy consumption, generation, and the status of distributed energy resources (DERs). The system’s ability to aggregate and process large volumes of data for extensive monitoring provides grid operators with a full, up-to-date view of grid conditions, enabling them to maintain a higher level grid visibility.
Inea Ingenious Ik Funkc 2 2

Forecasting and targeted flexibility

The system identifies where flexibility resources are available and where they can be most effectively deployed by evaluating options for load shifting, generation adjustments, and storage utilization. Using either its own prediction algorithm or an external forecasting service, inGenious Grid can ensure flexibility of assets ahead of time, acting as a virtual power plant and preventing large swings in frequency.
Inea Ingenious Ik Funkc 1 1

Energy flexibility marketplace

Autonomously manage and adjust energy flows in response to real-time grid conditions and price signals. inGenious Grid dynamically activates flexibility of large capacity, agregated by the operator, owned by residental prosumers. By decreasing solar production of the prosumers, the platform allows users to financially benefit from providing an equivalent of system services.
Inea Ingenious Ik Funkc 4 1

Integration with other grid-level systems

Communicate with and benefit from other grid-level technologies, including advanced distribution management systems (ADMS), energy market platforms, grid observability systems, forecasting, and even other flexibility management systems. This connectivity allows the operator a more unified and effective approach to managing the grid, installing flexibility management alongside existing systems.

Related Products

Ingenious

Industrial energy flexibility management system uses the principles of demand response to extract every potential from existing resources, and enables comprehensive energy management through dynamic schedules, long-term forecasts, and price signals.
View

Industrial energy monitoring system for complete control over energy flows, such as electricity (active and reactive), water, and gas. It features a flexible dashboard that allows automatic measurements, custom indicators, advanced analytics, alarms, and reports.
Cube

Industrial and commercial energy monitoring interface for connecting, monitoring, and basic management of individual energy loads, sources, or storage units. It is suitable for any device that requires a predictable, manually created schedule and control.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, inGenious Grid allows the effective management of dispersed prosumers in a unified system within the user’s local microgrid or across the wider distribution and transmission network. By aggregating measurement data, prosumer availability, and predefined network constraints, inGenious Grid automatically adapts available resources, energy storage units, and loads. In doing so, it meets constraints imposed by market supply and demand principles. VPP works like an automated flexibility market that connects flexibility providers and buyers based on automated offers and requests.
inGenious Grid can connect all types of consumers—residential, commercial, and industrial—as well as individual installations like power plants and storage units that tie directly into the grid. The most suitable candidates are electrified processes which can act as storage for electric, thermal, or other energy, capable of reducing power consumption or temporarily halting operations, such as EV charging stations or heat pumps, or entire sites managed at a lower level by inGenious Flex. inGenious Grid automatically assesses potential flexibility that a user can offer based on reported and projected data. It is important that all users understand the impact of demand response on their activities and are willing to exchange some of their otherwise unused flexibility for cost savings.
Yes, inGenious Grid can leverage the flexibility of its prosumers to provide ancillary services, including secondary reserve (automatic frequency restoration, aFRR) and tertiary reserve (manual frequency restoration, mFRR). Flexibility offers from prosumers able to adjust power factor (e.g., battery inverters) can include both apparent power and power factor. This means the reactive power of these prosumers can serve as a flexible resource for frequency regulation services.
Each user can take control over their own consumption at any time, unless contractually stated otherwise. Users may be financially compensated within the system for providing flexibility, which is an effective incentive. If a user proves unreliable as a flexibility provider, the system recognizes and records their reliability status. Users with low reliability are ranked lower in subsequent auctions, while highly reliable users can be additionally rewarded.
The rebound effect occurs when users consume additional energy after adaptation due to timing adjustments in their consumption. This rebound effect is described in each flexibility offer and is taken into account when automatically scheduling consumption. inGenious Grid ensures that a prosumer does not exceed a predefined consumption threshold and that all users collectively (the entire community managed by inGenious Grid) do not surpass the limit set by the distributor.
inGenious Grid is designed for easy integration with various IT systems, enabling data exchange through API/RESTful technology and other web services. Support for bidirectional connections via MQTT brokers further extends integration possibilities, allowing systems to communicate and operate in sync. This open approach ensures that inGenious Grid can function as a central energy management system, seamlessly interfacing with existing business, production, and energy systems to improve efficiency and enhance interoperability and maintenance.
Yes, inGenious Grid allows the effective management of dispersed prosumers in a unified system within the user’s local microgrid or across the wider distribution and transmission network. By aggregating measurement data, prosumer availability, and predefined network constraints, inGenious Grid automatically adapts available resources, energy storage units, and loads. In doing so, it meets constraints imposed by market supply and demand principles. VPP works like an automated flexibility market that connects flexibility providers and buyers based on automated offers and requests.
inGenious Grid can connect all types of consumers—residential, commercial, and industrial—as well as individual installations like power plants and storage units that tie directly into the grid. The most suitable candidates are electrified processes which can act as storage for electric, thermal, or other energy, capable of reducing power consumption or temporarily halting operations, such as EV charging stations or heat pumps, or entire sites managed at a lower level by inGenious Flex. inGenious Grid automatically assesses potential flexibility that a user can offer based on reported and projected data. It is important that all users understand the impact of demand response on their activities and are willing to exchange some of their otherwise unused flexibility for cost savings.
Yes, inGenious Grid can leverage the flexibility of its prosumers to provide ancillary services, including secondary reserve (automatic frequency restoration, aFRR) and tertiary reserve (manual frequency restoration, mFRR). Flexibility offers from prosumers able to adjust power factor (e.g., battery inverters) can include both apparent power and power factor. This means the reactive power of these prosumers can serve as a flexible resource for frequency regulation services.
Each user can take control over their own consumption at any time, unless contractually stated otherwise. Users may be financially compensated within the system for providing flexibility, which is an effective incentive. If a user proves unreliable as a flexibility provider, the system recognizes and records their reliability status. Users with low reliability are ranked lower in subsequent auctions, while highly reliable users can be additionally rewarded.
The rebound effect occurs when users consume additional energy after adaptation due to timing adjustments in their consumption. This rebound effect is described in each flexibility offer and is taken into account when automatically scheduling consumption. inGenious Grid ensures that a prosumer does not exceed a predefined consumption threshold and that all users collectively (the entire community managed by inGenious Grid) do not surpass the limit set by the distributor.
inGenious Grid is designed for easy integration with various IT systems, enabling data exchange through API/RESTful technology and other web services. Support for bidirectional connections via MQTT brokers further extends integration possibilities, allowing systems to communicate and operate in sync. This open approach ensures that inGenious Grid can function as a central energy management system, seamlessly interfacing with existing business, production, and energy systems to improve efficiency and enhance interoperability and maintenance.

Contact us

Have questions or want more information? Fill out the form, and we'll connect with you promptly.


    Your personal data will be processed by INEA d.o.o., Stegne 11, Ljubljana, based on legitimate interest (communication with customers and the public, Article 6(1)(f) of GDPR) for the purpose of responding to your question or inquiry. We will only keep your personal data until the end of our communication. If you have given us consent (Article 6(1)(a) of GDPR) to receive personalized e-news and offers, we will process your personal data for the purpose of sending newsletters and offers until revoked. Predictions about your interests will be based on your inquiries regarding our solutions. You can unsubscribe from receiving emails at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the received message. For more details, please read our Privacy Policy.