Research and development
The goal of Elering’s research and development activities is to contribute to the fulfilment of Elering’s strategic goals – to ensure security of supply in a climate-neutral manner, supporting the competitiveness of the Estonian economy.
In accordance with the owner’s expectations, Elering develops energy competence based on public interest and ensures the sustainability of its activities by steadily investing in research and development, both based on the company’s direct interests and more indirectly taking into account the development of the energy sector.
Research and development activities assess various long-term trends or policy goals that will, in turn, affect the future energy system or markets. The timeline in question ranges from five years to 2050, for which time the European Union has set an ambitious goal of achieving climate neutrality. The transition to a climate-neutral economy is a complex optimisation task with many variables, and a reasonable balance must be maintained between security of supply, energy security, affordability, and environmental sustainability. To this end, Elering cooperates with other system operators, the umbrella organisations of European transmission systems (ENTSO-E, ENTSOG and ENNOH), universities, and other partners.
To create energy competence for making informed decisions and for the benefit of the Estonian energy economy, Elering gathers knowledge on the following topics as part of its research and development activities:
- The impact of climate and energy policies and the development of transmission infrastructure and markets necessary to meet these objectives
- Factors affecting electricity, gas and hydrogen consumption and their future forecast
- The impact of different generation portfolios and network configurations on the power system and electricity market
- Opportunities to increase the reliability of the transmission system and optimise asset management
- Assessment and implementation of energy system flexibility and demand response resources
- Prerequisites and solutions for establishing a hydrogen transmission system
- Opportunities for increasing security of supply, energy security, and crisis resilience
- Energy big data analysis and artificial intelligence-based forecasting