ENTSO-E RDI Roadmap 2024-2034 (2024)

Full title: ENTSO-E RDI Roadmap 2024–2034

About the document

The ENTSO-E RDI Roadmap is legally mandated under Art. 30(1)(i) of Regulation (EU) 2019/943 (Electricity Market Regulation), under which ENTSO-E is responsible for coordinating TSO RDI activities; the Roadmap covers 10 years and is updated every 4 years (not a “rolling” programme). This 2024–2034 edition is the third major iteration. It was prepared by ENTSO-E’s Working Group Research, Development and Innovation Planning (WG RDIP), with support from RSE (Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico, Italy). ENTSO-E has 40 members; Svenska kraftnät contributed to the drafting team (Valentinas Dubickas).

Structure: 3 Clusters, 6 Missions, 90+ Milestones

The Roadmap is organized into three strategic Clusters, each divided into two Missions, with a total of 90+ measurable milestones to guide TSO RDI activity through 2034.

Cluster 1: Power Grid → Mission 1 + Mission 2
Cluster 2: Digitalised Grid → Mission 3 + Mission 4
Cluster 3: One-System → Mission 5 + Mission 6

Milestones are classified as short-, medium- and longer-term in the text (exact year bands, if any, are in figures not captured by the text extraction). It builds on the RDI Roadmap 2020–2030 (the raw gives no iteration count).

Innovation drivers

The Roadmap identifies innovation drivers from two directions:

Top-down (EU institutional): European Green Deal (incl. the minimum 55% emissions cut by 2030), REPowerEU, Grids Action Plan, Digitalising the Energy System action plan, AFIR, Solar Strategy, offshore RES strategy, CRMA, NZIA, AI Act.

Bottom-up (TSO operational needs):

• Variable renewables integration (wind, solar)
• Load growth from electrification (EVs, heat pumps, industry)
• Grid stability challenges from inverter-based resources
• Cross-border and offshore grid expansion
• System flexibility from distributed sources

Two drivers that are new in this edition (not in prior roadmaps):

1. Artificial intelligence (marked new in Fig. 3)
2. Hydrogen (marked new in Fig. 3; the raw says it has gained much more attention)

Cluster 1 — Power Grid

Mission 1: Enhance grid use and sustainability

Focus: maximizing use of existing infrastructure while reducing its environmental footprint.

Key milestones:

• Dynamic Line Rating (DLR): real-time line capacity calculation; with DTR and sensors it “will make it possible to operate grids close to their physical limits” (Dynamic Line Rating)
• Digital twin for asset management: medium-to-long term asset-management digital twin (the raw does not itemise health monitoring or lifecycle-cost effects)
• SF6-free switchgear: SF6-free solutions appear only in the raw’s longer-term sustainability paragraph (the earlier “multiple near-term milestones” is unsupported)
• Building Information Modelling (BIM): listed as a digital tool (the raw gives no “asset registry” detail)
• Circular economy: materials reuse, end-of-life frameworks for grid equipment
• Power flow control applications, placed in the longer term for demonstration in a real environment (FACTS is not mentioned)

Mission 2: HVDC and offshore grids

Focus: expanding the transmission backbone via HVDC and enabling the offshore renewable buildout.

Key milestones:

• Meshed/Multi-Terminal HVDC (MT HVDC): the raw says critical MT HVDC components require further development and field testing, with interoperability first as a single vendor, then multi-vendor
• Floating offshore wind platforms: the raw concerns dynamic cables and demonstration of floating offshore platforms and floating HVDC substations
• Offshore grid regulatory framework: a new EU regulatory framework for offshore grids plus a financial framework for meshed HVDC
• HVDC circuit breakers: named in the raw only as a Technopedia asset technology (the “prototype stage” claim is outside knowledge)

Cluster 2 — Digitalised Grid

Mission 3: Hybrid AC/DC stability

Focus: maintaining system stability as conventional synchronous generators are replaced by inverter-based resources (IBR).

Key milestones:

• Power Electronics Interfaced Devices (PEID) / Grid-forming inverters: in the short term stability margins of PEID-dominated systems need careful assessment; grid-forming demonstration should proceed step by step starting from systems with medium-to-high PEID penetration.
• Stability tools for hybrid AC/DC networks: simulation models and real-time monitoring for combined AC/DC topologies
• Quantum computing for grid optimization: the raw mentions quantum computing only as enabling innovative AI-based tools and near-real-time dynamic simulations (M3) and power-flow simulation tools (M4)

Mission 4: Control and interoperability

Focus: digital infrastructure for grid monitoring, control, and cross-operator coordination.

Key milestones:

• Digital twin for grid control: dynamic representation, eventually aiding grid control (medium-to-long term)
• AI-assisted control room support: decision-support tools for system operators; augmented reality interfaces
• Wide Area Monitoring Systems (WAMS): new WAMS concepts and dynamic security assessment
• Point-on-Wave (POW) measurement: enhancing grid observability
• Augmented reality for field operations and maintenance

Cluster 3 — One-System

Mission 5: Flexibility assessment and markets

The mission most directly relevant to this wiki. Focus: enabling distributed flexibility from DSOs, prosumers, and new market actors to contribute to system-level operation.

Key milestones:

• TSO-DSO coordination frameworks: “TSO–DSO coordination will be reinforced, especially concerning system planning, thus making possible to optimise resource allocation” (the raw names no protocols and does not mention NC DR — any link to Network Code on Demand Response is wiki inference).
• ICT platforms for distributed flexibility: “ICT platforms for the mass deployment of ancillary services from distributed resources” (long term; APIs/aggregation not mentioned). Directly relevant to Aggregation, Virtual Power Plant, SWITCH, NODES.
• Flexibility assessment tools: a pan-European assessment of flexibility needs for the whole energy-transition timespan, to guide cost-efficient deployment of flexibility resources (link to FNA/FNAM is wiki inference).
• AI/ML for flexibility optimization: the raw says AI, machine learning and blockchain “will also facilitate the unlocking and exploitation of system flexibility” and boost horizontal/vertical system integration. Also in M5 (omitted earlier): peer-to-peer, local, wholesale and ancillary-services markets integrated in daily operation; market mechanisms for system security and adequacy; demand-side response; tariffs, incentives and business models; ICT standards for market data; tools for balancing with short market timeframes.
• Digital twin application for enhanced grid flexibility: digital twins and advanced algorithms will increase exploitation of flexibility from renewable power plants (long term)

Mission 6: Cross-sector integration

Focus: integrating electricity with other energy vectors and sectors.

Key milestones:

• Hydrogen integration: long-duration storage potential of hydrogen and integration of hydrogen flexibility in system operation
• Electrification assessment: tools for quantifying the impact of large-scale EV, heat pump, and industrial electrification on grid needs; feeding into scenario planning and investment frameworks
• Harmonized role model: “develop a harmonised cross-sector role model to formally identify the roles and the responsibilities of the various involved actors and stakeholders” (no specific roles, sectors or NC DR link in the raw)

Technopedia link

The Roadmap integrates with ENTSO-E’s Technopedia — a catalog of power system technologies (no count in the raw) classified into three categories:

• Asset technologies (linked to Clusters 1–2): voltage source converters, phase shifting transformers, STATCOM, DLR, HVDC circuit breakers
• Digital technologies (linked to all clusters): AI (many topics), digital twins (M1, M4, M5)
• Flexibility technologies (linked to all clusters): virtual power plants (M5), demand response, battery technology, market coordination platforms, hydrogen technologies

The Roadmap → Technopedia link creates a pathway: achieving milestones advances Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) of underlying technologies. This creates a feedback loop between RDI and technology deployment.

Implementation and resources

Effort estimate: each of the 40 ENTSO-E members needs on average 5.6 FTE per year to address identified RDI milestones — a lower bound since it excludes contributions from research centers, universities, and technology developers. Total implied: ~224 FTE/year across ENTSO-E membership just from TSOs (wiki derivation; 1 FTE = 215 working days per the raw’s footnote 14).

Next steps: ENTSO-E will develop an RDI Implementation Plan following this Roadmap, outlining specific project concepts addressing near-term priorities. Calls for:

• EC innovation programmes (Horizon Europe topics) to align with Roadmap milestones
• Improved regulatory frameworks enabling TSOs to invest directly in RDI (not just via external projects)
• Both internal TSO investment and external collaborative funding used in parallel

Policy anchor: The Energy Council’s May 2024 conclusions on electricity grid infrastructure as a critical enabler of energy transition are cited as political backing for the resource ask.

Relevance to existing wiki topics