Enel Distribuzione, the Distribution System Operator (DSO) of the Enel Group, has launched -in November 2011- a smart grid demonstrator in the Forlì-Cesena area, Emilia Romagna region. The demo project, implemented with Cisco, RSE, Selta and Siemens as partners, will also benefit from EU financial contribution within the Grid4EU (http://www.grid4eu.eu/) project (“Large Scale Demonstration of Advanced Smart Grid solutions with wide Replication and Scalability potential for Europe”), composed by 6 demos on different EU countries.

The main objective of the Italian demonstrator is the realization of an advanced control system allowing to increase the Medium Voltage network hosting capacity of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), thus maximizing RES integration.

The demonstrator involves two primary substations, around 20 medium voltage lines, 100+ Medium Voltage/Low Voltage substations and at least five Medium Voltage distributed generation facilities for a total installed capacity of around 5 MW. Overall, 35,000 low voltage customers will benefit from the project’s implementation, even though they will not be directly involved in the experimentation.

All the innovative equipment prototypes have been realized and in house tests have been carried out.

Laboratory integration tests are underway and the overall system field installation will be completed in 2014. The paper, with an introductory part on the new control system architecture, focuses on the control algorithm mathematical models and logics, presenting the main results from the simulation phase already started and the validation of the control functions.