TNO - Netherlands

TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) is one of the major applied-research organisations in Europe. With a staff of approximately 3,000 and an annual turnover of 400 million Euros, TNO is carrying out research in order to achieve impact on seven societal themes, including Energy. TNO functions as an intermediary between basic research organisations and industry. By translating scientific knowledge into practical applications, TNO contributes to the innovation capacity of businesses and government. TNO is involved in many international projects (about 30% of the market turnover), including EU-funded collaborations.
TNO has a track record in smart grid research projects, especially focusing on distributed energy resources and hybrid energy systems.

Prof. George B. Huitema is Professor of Telematics at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Groningen. Furthermore he is Senior Research Scientist and member of the Smart Energy Systems Group of the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research TNO.

Dr. Olaf van Pruissen is a scientific researcher in the interdisciplinary field of smart electricity systems, installations in buildings and heat grids, combining hybrid energy control with computational intelligence. Strongly motivated by developing technologies to counteract climate change, he has extensive research experience in the fields of market-based control of power systems, smart grid ICT architectures and integration of distributed energy resources and demand response in the energy system. He has coordinated and contributed to EIT ICT project Hegrid and Dutch TKI project Couperus, contributed to the FP7 projects Ecogrid, OS4ES and E-Hub, EU-EFRO project Heatmatcher, EIT ICT project Impact and Dutch funded projects Flexergie and SmartProofs.

Dr. Stephen J. Galsworthy is a Consultant with TNO, Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, where he specializes in international consultancy work focused on smart grid projects.

Tim Zijderveld, MSc is a Business Developer for the Energy Theme at TNO, Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research.

Completed and on-going projects

Relevant international projects include: FP7 EcoGrid, FP7 DREAM, FP7 ELECTRA,  FP7 OS4ES, FP7 ADVANCED, FP7 ELECTRA, FP7 SUNSEED, FP7 COTEVOS, FP7 CIVIS, FP7 E-hub, EU EFRO Heatmatcher, EIT-Digital HE-Grid and EIT-Digital IMPACT. At the national level TNO is an instrumental partner for both the TKI Urban Energy and TKI System Integration.

• FLEXIQUEST (Matched funding with industry, 2012-2013). Research aimed at increasing the share of renewables in the energy mix, by quantifying potential for (price driven) demand side management for medium enterprise and the value for all actors in the value chain.

Facilities
TNO operates the Hybrid Energy System Integration (HESI) laboratory. This facility, located on the EnTranCe terrain in Groningen, has been built to prove the reliability of future hybrid energy system configurations. The facility bridges the gap between proof of  principle and the deployment of hybrid  energy system technology in real life. Within the HESI-lab testing configurations include: Power to Gas, Heat conversion and storage, and Electrical storage.
TNO has developed multiple relevant ICT technologies for smart grids. These include ICT-based control systems such as PowerMatcher and HeatMatcher and the EF-Pi (Energy Flexibility Platform and Interface), an interoperable platform that is able to connect to a variety of appliances and support different Smart Grid services. The Energy Flexibility Interface (EFI), a generic interface used to describe and access energy flexibility which sits at the core of EF-Pi, is currently the subject of the ISO standardization workgroup ISO/IEC JTC1 SC25/WG1.
TNO supports the simulation of physical networks and system evolution with attention to technical, economic and regulatory aspects through its DiDo and CHESS modelling tools and Integrated Testing and Simulation Facility (ITSF).

Key publications

• Toersche, H.A. and Hurink, J.L. and Konsman, M.J. (2015) Energy management with TRIANA on FPAI. In: PowerTech, 2015 IEEE Eindhoven, 29 Jun - 02 Jul 2015, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. pp. 1-6. IEEE Power & Energy Society. 
• JK Kok, MJJ Scheepers, IG Kamphuis (2010) Intelligence in electricity networks for embedding renewables and distributed generation. Intelligent infrastructures, 179-209
• Van Pruissen, O., Van der Togt, A. & Werkman, E. (2014). Energy Efficiency Comparison of a Centralized and a Multi-agent Market Based Heating System in a Field Test. In Robert J Howlett, ed. The 6th International Conference on Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, SEB-14. Cardiff, Wales, UK, 2014. Energy Procedia. 25 - 27 June 2014
• Blaauwbroek, N., Nguyen, H.P., Konsman, M.J., Shi, H., Kamphuis, I.G. & Kling, W.L. (2015). Decentralized resource allocation and load scheduling for multi-commodity smart energy systems. IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, 6(4), 1506-1514.
• P. Booij, V. Kamphuis, O. V. Pruissen, and C. Warmer (2013) “Multi-agent control for integrated heat and electricity management in residential districts,” in Proc. 4th Int. Workshop Agent Technol. Energy Syst. (ATES), Minnesota, MN, USA.
• JK Kok (2013) The PowerMatcher: Smart Coordination for the Smart Electricity Grid, Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit