A methodology to quantify the impact of a renewed T&D infrastructure on EU 2020 goals

This paper addresses the issue of the evaluation of how modern and restructured Transmission and Distribution (T&D) infrastructures help accomplish the so-called EU 2020 targets, in terms of efficiency increase, CO₂ reduction and a wider employ of renewable energy resources. A methodology is proposed in order to quantify the possible environmental benefits as well as the power quality improvement provided by the application of modern T&D products and systems on the power grids. Such methodology is based both on the identification of suitable “performance (technical) indices” to be used to rank the benefits brought by the different grid upgrading measures and on the definition of suitable “test networks”, which can be employed as benchmarks to perform the numerical evaluation of the introduced indices. Then, a procedure is presented in order to determine and compare the quantitative effect of each single corrective action on T&D power grids. Finally, some considerations on possible side effects and advices on strategies for the implementation of the corrective measures are discussed.