Testing curative load-shedding measures in extra-high and high-voltage grids
Berlin, April 10, 2026 – Under the consortium leadership of PSI Software SE, the PROGRESS research project was successfully completed after four years. Together with six consortium partners from industry and academia, methods for curative system control were investigated. The project was funded under grant number 03EI4046A as part of the 7th Energy Research Program in the “Power Grids” funding area of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE).
The project’s goal was the practical testing of curative grid management in high and extra-high voltage grids to enable higher utilization of existing grids and, consequently, the further integration of renewable energies into the power grid.
PSI’s research objectives focus on calculating time- and weather-dependent thermal limit currents on overhead lines and determining curative measures at the interface between extra-high and high voltage grids. In close collaboration with the project partners, the development of practical and requirements-oriented methods was prioritized.
As part of the project, two field tests were conducted to demonstrate the practical applicability of the developed methods. In one field test, thermal limits on overhead lines were investigated in cooperation with TenneT TSO GmbH and Transnet BW GmbH. In the second field test, curative measures to increase the utilization of grid-coupling transformers were developed jointly with TenneT TSO GmbH and SH Netz GmbH.
The field tests were supported by demonstrators from the research partners Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and RWTH Aachen University, which focused on redundancy measures for remedial actions and stability analyses, as well as hybrid state estimation, WAMPAC, and system automation. Netze BW GmbH supported the project as an associated partner.
The PSI Group develops software products for optimizing the flow of energy and materials for utilities and industry. As an independent software producer with more than 2,300 employees, PSI has been a technology leader since 1969 for process control systems that ensure sustainable energy supply, production and logistics by combining AI methods with industrially proven optimization methods. The innovative industry products can be operated on-premises or in the cloud.
