A2A project: A practical implementation of smart grids in the urban area of Milan

Distribution systems have undergone a strong evolution in the last few years. An important cause of this evolution is the growing presence of dispersed generation; the increasing levels of quality of service required by final users are another important issue for Distribution System Operators. These driving forces are particularly challenging in Italy: on the one hand, recent incentives have fostered the installation of many Dispersed Generation units on MV networks; on the other hand, the quality of service regulations put in place by the Italian Energy Regulator push Distribution System Operators to exploit automation on distribution grids. Within this framework, the paper describes a practical implementation of the smart grid concept to a real-life MV network in the urban area of Milan, developed by A2A Reti Elettriche (which owns and operates the distribution network in the cities of Milan and Brescia) in the context of smart grid demonstration projects launched by the Italian Energy Regulator in 2010. After a brief illustration of the network adopted for the experiment, the smart grid architecture is presented, along with the main functionalities to be achieved. Particular attention is devoted to an innovative automatic procedure for selective fault detection, based on logic selectivity and fast network reconfiguration. Some remarks are also provided about the performances of telecommunication supports used for the project.