The growing integration of distributed generation, electrical storage, flexible loads, electric mobility, and power-to-hydrogen technologies is changing the function of classical electrical customer installations. Modern microgrids coordinate generation, storage, conversion, and consumption within a shared system boundary and present themselves to the public electricity grid as a controllable unit.
Using the Living Lab at the Green Energy Center Europe and its EWest and HyWest research activities as an example, this work examines which technical and regulatory system boundary is appropriate between such a microgrid and the public distribution grid. The central thesis: the grid operator’s requirements can generally be defined and verified at the grid connection point (Point of Common Coupling, PCC), while the internal coordination of PV, battery storage, electrolysis, charging infrastructure, heat pumps, and flexible loads is handled by the microgrid’s energy management system.
Background
Electrical grid connection rules have historically been shaped largely around individual generation plants and individual loads. However, with increasing sector coupling, systems are emerging behind a single grid connection point in which multiple generators, storage units, loads, and energy converters are coordinated together. International microgrid standards (the IEC 62898 series, IEEE 2030.7/2030.8, IEEE 1547-2018) and the European RfG Regulation already support a functional view of this interface; the current development of Austria’s TOR technical rules is likewise moving toward a grid-connection-point logic that considers generation, consumption, and storage jointly at the shared connection point.
Significance
The Green Energy Center Europe Living Lab connects photovoltaics, battery storage, electrolysis, hydrogen systems, charging infrastructure, and flexible loads in a real, operating microgrid. Such a system lends itself to a hierarchical control architecture: the grid operator defines setpoints, limits, and interfaces at the grid connection point, while the microgrid’s energy management system coordinates internal resources within these boundary conditions. Following the principle of minimum required information, the grid operator receives as much information and intervention capability as grid security requires — and as little insight into internal operations as is technically possible.
Outlook
Grid-connection-point regulation is not a departure from the existing regulatory framework, but its functional evolution for hybrid systems. Further research is needed in particular on defining the minimum required measured variables, permissible operating ranges at the PCC, response times, protection functions, and communication requirements, as well as on verification and testing procedures for hybrid microgrids — questions that can be investigated and further developed through metrological studies at the GEC/FEN Research Living Lab.
GEC-SA-8670b7 │ Fleischhacker, Nikolaus (2026). microgrid regulation, grid connection point, energy management system, hybrid systems, Living Lab
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