We talked with Roberto Zangrandi, the Secretary-General of E.DSO. He shared the
organization’s core values, goals, and benefits of being a member of E.DSO. We also talked about E.DSO’s role in founding the EU DSO, as well as the future of collaboration between similar organizations in the industry.
What are your organization’s core values?
E.DSO was founded in 2008 as an informal organization. In the beginning, there were 12 of the largest DSOs in Europe that wanted to be acknowledged as DSOs in front of the European Commission.
The electric association at the time, EURELECTRIC, was comprehending distribution, generation, market, etc. It’s a federation – an association of associations. What these DSOs needed, though, was to have their own face shown in front of the Commission in order to participate and get EU funding for the development and demonstration of the smart grid.
E.DSO became an association in 2010. A non-profit international association. After that, it became the home of the large DSOs, those fully unbundled, 100% electric, the leading in their countries –– and most of them are our members today as well.
The values are pretty much eradicated, as there is a sentiment of the “old Club guys” sharing the same problems and having similar strategic approach. So, the value is the feeling of collaboration. The top managers of our members, their CEOs sit in the board of directors. What we achieved with this is to have people making executive decisions talking and discussing on the spot. What is decided on our board is executive, thus we speed up the processes. We have the agility in proposing the policy, in advocating a position, and credibility that no other organization has, thus helping the Commission to identify what is important.
Another core value is cooperation and total openness we have around the table and the ability to help each other when it’s needed.
What would you say are the main goals?
The main goal is to be the one who suggests and contributes to the energy agenda to the European Commission. We are the most qualified to identify what are the distribution industry needs. I don’t want to be humble: we are representing a big industry. We invest most of the money and spend most of the money in modernization and development for the best technics and the best grid. We are in the position to tell what direction the DSO policy should follow.
We are doing this through our participation in the projects financed by the European Union. We are doing this by demonstrating what everybody in our association has developed, and we are experimenting constantly with what is new. We are proposing new solutions among ourselves in an open system. However, we are not selling the solutions, that is not our business.
Our role also is to stand up and explain to the regulators what the industry needs and to explain to the policymakers how to see a mile further. Many times, policymakers manage the present with the instruments made in the past.
We push the Commission, policymakers, the European Parliament, and the Council, to face the reality of the industry at the same speed as the progress in electric technologies is made. We need forward-looking legislations and regulations. That means having the flexibility that adapts immediately to the evolution of the market. We would no longer need to wait for years to solve the issues.
How many members do you have in the organization? What are the benefits of membership in the E.DSO?
We currently have almost 40 members. The benefit is to be a part of an influential group of DSOs, setting the agenda for the Commission, and being able to analyze regulation and legislation in the making.
The major benefit is to be a part of the grid managers and to have the possibility to solve problems together. The very important thing are the common resilience plans. We share solutions and help when it comes to resilience issues. For instance, the floods and fires, the Covid emergency – all of it was tackled by our members by sharing support and solutions.
We must not forget the aid given during last year’s floods in Central Europe, the fires in Greece and the COVID 19 crisis. We must also not forget the help given to colleagues, in materials, manpower, and solutions in case of extreme weather episodes and lately, the war in Ukraine. We were able to concretely help our Ukrainian member who received 7 generators to solve immediate emergency situations and is continually receiving materials from the other members. We also managed to relocate their families, several hundreds of them, and offer hospitality for them. We are not the red cross or refugees commission, but we are there and are available to help when needed. We have 11 staff members with 3 completely devoted to this emergency and others devoted to fires, floods, and other emergencies.
Another important aspect is our cyber security response task force. We have put it at disposal for all members of E.DSO, during this Ukraine crisis.
A year or two ago EU DSO came as a new entity. Can you tell us what change that brought?
EU DSO entity was created by the European Commission; E.DSO proposed it already back in 2014 since we were advocating for a single DSO association. In 2015, the EU Commission came to a proposal of having an entity for all DSOs with above 100.000 customers that are legally unbundled. That has produced a series of criticism because there are plenty of small distributions, that wouldn’t fit the description. Out of over 2400 DSOs in Europe, only about 200 are above 100.000 customers. The small DSOs wanted to be a part of this entity as well.
The only issue we had with this is that it equalizes the small DSOs with the larger ones. One- third of the board is reserved for the small DSOs, one-third for medium-sized, and one-third for the largest. We have been very vocal about this issue, but we still finally fully participated in the formation of EU DSO, together with CEDEC, GEODE, and EURELECTRIC.
The mission of the entity is to give the Commission legislative and technical advice on matters that are of interest to the DSOs. It must be there to define network codes for cyber security, and to facilitate the integration of renewable energy sources into the grid. There should not be any influence in the policy making, no political role. It’s just there to give advice and has an executive role. It is anyway inevitable that a small area of advocacy related to these issues appears inevitable.
We have a role to make sure the entity works properly. We, together with CEDEC, GEODE, and EURELECTRIC, are a part the strategic advisory board of the EU DSO, here we offer support and we observe the work of the entity.
Do you see your organization working more closely with other similar organizations?
We believe that there must be strong cooperation between the organizations, specially between CEDEC, GEODE, and EURELECTRIC and us, because the EU DSO has to rely on the expertise of these associations and their support. All the organizations must converge on a series of elements if they want to properly address the Commission and if they want to create the agenda of the industry in the future.
We have to be more active because we have the largest part of investors for the future of the grid.
Conclusion
One of the very significant benefits of being a member of E.DSO is the unlimited help of other members in resolving crisis situations such as wild fires, floods or even war.
The key for the functioning of the newly formed EU DSO entity that should provide advisory and executive, technical and legislative assistance to European Commission, is cooperation and expertise of E.DSO, CEDEC, GEODE and EURELECTRIC.
Question for the audience
What do you think, what organizations have to work together in order to achieve forward- looking legislation and regulation in Smart cities area?