Assessing Smart Grid Benefits and Impacts: EU and U.S. Initiatives

In the last few years, initiatives on Smart Grids have been growing in number and scope on both sides of the Atlantic. A variety of projects has been deployed throughout Europe and US with different aims and results. Substantial public and private investments have been committed to research and development (R&D), demonstration and deployment activities. At this stage, there is a need to evaluate the outcome of implemented projects and share experiences and lessons learned. Effective project assessment and knowledge sharing is instrumental to prioritize policy initiatives, unlock market investment potentials and instil trust and understanding in consumers.

The scope of this document is to find common ground between EU and US assessment approaches on Smart Grid projects. First of all, we need to make sure we understand each other’s language. We need to assess correspondences among definitions, terminology and methodological approaches, in order to clarify commonalities and differences. Secondly, we need to strengthen cooperation on assessment frameworks and on sharing data collection experiences, project results and lessons learned.

This joint work is carried out in the framework of the EU-US Energy Council1, which intends to deepen the transatlantic dialogue on strategic energy issues such as policies to move towards low carbon energy sources while strengthening the on-going scientific collaboration on energy technologies.  In this context, a first meeting among EU and US experts on Smart Grid Assessment framework was held on the 6th of December 2010 in Albuquerque, where a set of cooperation items was identified. The outcome of the first meeting has resulted in an interim version of this document which has then served as basis of discussion for a second meeting, which was held on the 7th of November 2011 in Washington (the list of participants is reported in ANNEX VIII).

The outcomes of the meeting have been incorporated in this final report, which provides a framework for EU-US cooperation on Smart Grid assessment methodologies and highlights a number of open issues for further common work.