In an organisation as significant as ours, business continuity, meaning a secure and uninterrupted supply of electricity to all consumers now and in the future, is a priority. The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences have led our organisation to reformulate its priorities for the coming years. This resulted in a supplement to the PSE Strategy for 2020–2022 with 6 challenges and 8 strategic objectives.

Adequate integration with RCCs

The deepening regional integration of electricity systems is prompting PSE to intensify its efforts to model mutual interactions with its partners accordingly. PSE's activities are geared towards regionalisation of key operator processes and transferring selected processes to Regional Coordination Centres (RCCs), which started operating on 1 July 2022, replacing the Regional Safety Coordinators that had been in place up to then. TSCNET Services GmbH functions as the Regional Coordination Centre to which PSE belongs. PSE seeks to systematically strengthen RCCs while developing tools to verify actions taken at regional level.

Ensuring adequate European market and system methodologies

European energy regulations in many cases provide for the clarification of specific solutions by means of methodologies created by TSOs and NEMOs, and the approval of National Regulatory Authorities (NRA) or the European Agency for the Cooperation of Regulators (ACER). Since, in many cases, regulations are created at a very general level, these are the methodologies that determine the actual shape and quality of many power engineering solutions. Properly prepared methodologies are crucial for market processes and other TSO activities; they have a direct impact on the quality of solutions, costs for individual entities and countries, and security of electricity supply. Therefore, PSE's active participation in the preparation of the methodologies and their approval process by the relevant regulatory authorities is crucial for the quality of the market and power system solutions implemented.

PSE employees take an active part in the works of teams developing methodologies at the European and regional level to ensure the high quality of the solutions developed and, therefore, the efficient operation of the market and the power system at the national and European level.

Ensuring an adequate level of reactive power compensation

In line with the energy transition goals, the national power system (NPS) will face significant structural changes over the next several years.

In the current Development Plan for meeting current and future electricity demand for 2023-2032, a significant share of renewable energy sources (including from offshore wind farms - hereinafter: OWFs), energy storage facilities, as well as investments in new grid resources to enable power transmission and transformation (including an internal HVDC system connecting northern and southern Poland).

The increasing share of renewable energy sources in the NPS, especially sources with full-scale high-capacity power-electronic converters, is pushing back conventional generating units with synchronous generators. Converter sources are characterised by different properties related to cooperation with the power system than synchronous sources. Thus, the anticipated change in the generation structure in the NPS and the resulting change in the volume and direction of power transfers in the transmission grid create new challenges for the operation of the system, such related to:

• maintenance of the required voltage profile (static and dynamic) and voltage stability,
• emergence of new local oscillation (low-frequency and high-frequency) mods resulting from the interaction of converter source control systems and the grid,
• effect on damping low-frequency inter-system oscillations,
• impact on the transient stability of operating synchronous units,
• deterioration of frequency stability conditions resulting from a reduction in the natural inertia of the rotating masses of synchronous units (on the scale of the entire continental European system).

Significant changes in the future formation of voltage profiles in the transmission grid and an increase in the dynamics of changes in these profiles were identified in the work conducted at PSE from 2020 to 2022, titled "The concept of linking the NPS with offshore wind farms in a long-term perspective". The work indicated the need to provide a significant number of resources for reactive power compensation systems: capacitor banks, shunt reactors, as well as synchronous compensators to improve the conditions for stable operation of offshore wind farms.

The dynamically changing NPS environment implies the need for constant quantitative and qualitative updating of planned compensation resources. A well-defined optimisation approach is needed, which should ensure safe and reliable operation of the NPS taking into account new developments, with minimal system costs.

In this regard, in the second half of 2022, an initiative was established at PSE to launch a project entitled "Compensation Resources Management in the NPS." The main objective of the project was to create a continuous capacity in our organisation to plan, manage work and standardise compensation resources in the dynamically changing environment of the NPS.

The project includes completion of the following tasks:

• optimisation of compensation resources in the NPS over a 15-year horizon,
• assessment of technical and economic feasibility of converting conventional generating units to synchronous compensation operation,
• development of a system services model, including parameterisation of market products for TSOs as regards reactive power compensation and short-circuit power supply in the NPS,
• development of a concept concerning a hierarchical system for area management of existing and new sources of reactive power,
• development of technical requirements for newly built compensation devices in the NPS,

The first tasks of the project are scheduled to start in the second quarter of 2023, and the project is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2024.

Implementation of the mechanism to obtain flexibility from the distribution network

Member States were required to implement a mechanism for procuring flexibility services from the distribution network and frequency-independent services under the provisions of the Directive 2019/944 on common rules for the internal market for electricity and amending Directive 2012/27/EU. The implementation of the mechanism is aimed, among other things, at reducing the risk of blackout, thanks to the increased participation of system users connected to the distribution network in the provision of system services and balancing of the NPS. The aforementioned services, provided to system operators, will result in significantly expanded capabilities of these operators to ensure the safe and reliable operation of the power system.

In 2021, comments were prepared on the proposal to implement Directive 2019/944 (draft amendment to Law No. UC74) proposed by the Ministry of Climate and Environment. At the same time, as part of the implementation of works related to broadly defined flexibility services, PSE participates in OneNet research and development project which received EU funding. The objective of the project is to formulate and execute a concept for the completion of works, with a particular focus on the Polish demonstrator, i.e. to define, test and demonstrate the procurement of services from flexibility sources that can be used in the future to support network management by system operators.

The OneNet project began on 1 October 2020, and will run through 30 March 2024. Our company has identified products the test purchasing of which from entities connected to the MV and LV distribution network it considers useful for TSOs. An online platform is being built to enable test purchases of services.

Implementation of investor deliveries

The subject of investor supplies are key equipment, materials, services and systems for the implementation of grid investment projects and operational needs. Projects in progress included the supply of phase conductors, transformers, circuit breakers, autotransformers, reactors, MTS-type circuit breaker modules and field protection. Tender procedures have been launched for the conclusion of framework agreements on the supply of disconnecting switches and Control and Monitoring Systems (CMS). Tender procedures were being prepared for the supply of cable systems, busbar protection and the next stages of the supply of circuit breakers, transformers, autotransformers and reactors. The value of the Investor Delivery Program amounted to PLN 3 billion.