The digitalisation of the European power system starts with EUR 36 million and 51 entities
04th November 2019
There are eleven European countries involved in InterConnect - Germany, Austria, Belgium, Slovenia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Portugal – and there are seven large-scale demonstrators that will be installed in Europe in this project, which was approved by the European Commission under the H2020 programme. The demonstrators will be installed in Portugal, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece and France from 2021.
The project, which will last for four years, is divided into eight fields of action: buildings and power grids, big data, cybersecurity, standardisation, ontology, digital platforms, IoT and cloud.
InterConnect will develop solutions for a digitalisation of buildings and of the power system based on architectures for the Internet of Things (IoT) which, with the help of several digital platforms and by using a universal ontology called SAREF, will ensure the interoperability between equipment and systems while preserving the privacy and cybersecurity of data of different users.
Regulators and political decision-makers, end users (home and building owners), developers (SMEs and startups) and integrators will benefit from these advanced solutions that will be available in the demonstrators throughout the project. After its completion, it will be available on the market starting in 2023.
Besides the technological developments that will be conducted by the 51 partners of the consortium, the project will also foster the innovation ecosystem to other players, by offering opportunities to entrepreneurs through Open Calls. The project will launch three calls to select 42 innovative projects – 14 prototypes and 28 small-scale demonstrators – in order to cooperate with the project in the mission of creating interoperable solutions for users, buildings and the power grid.
InterConnect’s consortium, which is led by INESC TEC and with the technical innovation coordination of the Dutch R&D institution TNO, will be composed of six different partners: R&D and consulting, manufacturers and associations, IoT/ICT service providers, Distribution System Operators (DSOs), retailers and end users.
The project’s R&D institutions include the coordinator INESC TEC (PT), and the technical and innovation coordinator, TNO (NL), but also IMEC (BE), VITO (BE), Athens University of Economics and Business (GR), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BE), Fraunhofer IEEE (DE), Yncréa (FR), Politecnico di Milano (IT), RSE SpA – Research on Energy System (IT), Universität Kassel (DE), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL), German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence – DFKI (DE) and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Studieren in Dortmund – UASD (DE). The project's consulting companies are composed of 3E (BE), Th!nk-E (BE), Gfi (BE), Trialog (FR) and FundingBox (PL). The following entities are part of the manufacturer group: Schneider Electric (PT), ABB (BE), Whirpool (IT), Bosch Siemens (DE), Bosch Termoteknik (DE), Wirelane (DE), Vaillant (DE), OpenMotics (BE), Daikin (BE), Miele (DE) and ThermoVault (BE). The associations that are part of this consortium are KNX (BE), EEBUS (DE) and EDSO for Smart Grids (BE). The InterConnect partners belonging to the IoT and/or ICT service provider typology are WINGS ICT Solutions (GR), cyberGRID (AT), Sensinov (FR), GridNet (GR), VizLore (SRB), Cosmote (GR), KEO (DE), DuCoop (BE) and Domótica SGTA (PT). The DSOs that are part of this project are EDP Distribuição (PT), Elektro Ljubljana (SL) and ENEDIS (FR). Three partners belong to the retail category: SONAE (PT), HERON (GR) and ENGIE (FR). In the end user category, there are four partners, in which the Portuguese company SONAE is also included in this typology and not only on the retail one. PlanetIdea (IT), iCity (NL) and Cordium (BE)
This project was funded by the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement No. 857237.
For more information:
Joana Coelho
Communication Service
INESC TEC
FEUP’s Campus
Rua Dr Roberto Frias
4200-465 Porto
Portugal
Tel.: +351 22 209 4297
Mob.: +351 924 444 321
www.inesctec.pt