Climate change, the "electrification of everything" and exponential growth of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are heavily impacting power grids in Italy and all around the world. 

In the next ten years, Areti - the Roman DSO - estimated that the peak electricity demand on its distribution grid will increase from 2,200 MW to 3,300 MW. To manage this growth in energy demand and prevent criticalities in the grids like blackouts or voltage violations, Areti is going to increase its grid capacity at a fast pace, accelerating its digital transformation to shape the next level of grid management.

Leveraging the expertise and experience built up with the European PlatOne project, Areti and Siemens have announced their collaboration on the RomeFlex project. This initiative aims to test the ability to manage congestion and voltage volatility across the stressed power grids of Italy's capital city. To reach this goal, Areti designed an innovative local flexibility market architecture boosted by Siemens technology and pioneering energy domain know-how. A set of algorithms, developed by Siemens for the RomeFlex project, enables Areti to predict and identify with high speed and precision the points of the Roman distribution grid where some congestions, power outages or other kind of issues may occur in the next four hours, tomorrow or weeks to come. Furthermore, Siemens technology is able to calculate exactly the amount of flexibility needed to avoid this kind of grid issues.
Areti is pioneering a virtuous and profitable local flexibility market that brings benefits to grid operators as well as to all those entities able to change their consumption or generation in an agile and efficient way.