For the past decades, ancillary services for the reliable operation of the power grid were provided mainly by synchronous generators of conventional large-scale power plants. Ancillary services include frequency stability, voltage stability, operational management and the re-establishment of power generation. In future, these ancillary services must be provided by a multitude of decentralised producers on the basis of renewable energies and loads in the distribution grids in terms of a cross-sectoral Energiewende. This increases the requirements with regard to grid operations management and management of ancillary services across different voltage levels. This also leads to increased requirements regarding the scope and resilience of the digital transformation of the energy system, as well as to new demands concerning the economic and legal framework conditions of future electricity supply systems.

In summary, in order to find answers to the central common research question of SiNED, the following guiding questions are defined for the alliance project:

1. How can the changed demand regarding ancillary services that are to be increasingly delivered by renewable energy systems be covered up until 2050?

2. How can the demand for ancillary services be covered by the flexible provision of decentralised grid users and how can this challenge of inverter-dominated distribution grids be solved?

3. How can the flexibility of providing ancillary services in distribution grids with consideration of resilience be explored in terms of information technology?

4. What economic optimisation potential is possible when providing ancillary services, what statutory (data protection) restrictions must be observed and what adaptations of the statutory framework are required?