Operating the electrical grid must comply with many constraints on its physical elements. To ensure grid security, TSOs (transmission system operators) have ways of relieving these grid constraints, commonly called "remedial actions". These actions may or may not be costly.
The European electricity grid is highly meshed, spanning upon multiple countries and TSOs. National grids are no longer independent: every event can have a spill-over effect across the whole continent. Two of the most important consequences are:
- TSOs can "pollute" other TSOs' grids with unnecessary electrical flows, putting a strain on their national grids;
- Optimizing the cost of grid operation (i.e. of remedial action implementation) is no longer a national problem, but a global one.

Thus, it becomes necessary to optimize the operation of the EU grid on a large scale and implement an agreed method to share its costs. Developing open-source tools to achieve these goals has benefits with robustness, transparency, auditability, and re-usability.