supporting Demand-side Initiatives Giuseppe Mauri*, Roberto Meda*, Diana Moneta*, Paolo Gramatica* CIRED 2007-19th International Conference and Exhibition on ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION Vienna, 21-27 Maggio 2007 * CESI RICERCA In recent years the Italian power sector has been undergoing considerable changes: EU Directive on electricity (2003/54/EC, ex 96/92/EC) established common rules for creation of internal markets and required privatisation of Italy’s dominant energy monopolies. Since July 2004 all business customers may choose their energy supplier, unbundling will be extended to all domestic customers by July 2007. This will involve a new role for the final user: from passive consumer to active participant. Final users participation to the market will be substantially represented by their ability of modulating their own load profiles as result of market signal (price) or network signal (emergency). To take this opportunity it is necessary to provide a platform that will perform several functionalities: communication with distributor/retailer, interaction with user, load management, energy storage and management of distributed micro-generators. In this way, the final customer house will become an active “node” of the network. Altogether several nodes may also provide services to the network. A Verification & Validation Environment for the integration of Demand- side Initiatives (DSI-VVE) has been created with the aim to follow the whole “V” life-cycle for above mentioned functions. This paper describes the method adopted and the whole life-cycle for one function.