The Electricity System Improvement Canvas (ESIC)

Abstract

This paper addresses the complexity of commercially exploiting technical solutions in ecosystems with many stakeholders or in ecosystems that are highly influenced by regulatory issues. It does so by introducing a new tool, called the electricity system improvement canvas (ESIC). The ESIC allows for an efficient design, visualization, analysis, and/or validation of innovative system solutions and their implementation. Moreover, the ESIC helps to focus on the benefits that the solution provides for the system as a whole and for certain stakeholders. It is normally used together with the value creation ecosystem (VCE), a tool previously developed by the authors, providing more concretion and detail to it. To better portray its functionality, the ESIC and the VCE will be applied to one of the demo projects explored within EU-SysFlex, a project that has to do with congestion problems in the German electricity grid.