After four years, the European project InteGrid has come to an end. The main objective of the project, successfully fulfilled, was to demonstrate the integration of new technologies for the operation of smart grids and energy storage and management systems, thus promoting a substantial increase in the integration of renewable energies in the distribution network.
Several technologies were developed and demonstrated throughout the project, in real operating environments, through demonstrators installed in Portugal (Caldas da Rainha, Alcochete and Évora), Slovenia (Ljubljana) and Sweden (Stockholm). INESC TEC, represented by four of its 13 research centres – Centre for Power and Energy Systems (CPES), Centre for Industrial Engineering and Management (CEGI), Centre for Information Systems and Computer Graphics (CSIG) and High-assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab) – was the technical coordinator of the InteGrid project, in charge of developing eleven technologies.
Among the technologies developed within the scope of InteGrid, INESC TEC was solely responsible for the development of: load and renewable energy forecasting software for medium and low voltage grids; multi-temporal optimal power flow with flexibility control of storage systems and demand response; low voltage state estimation and control software; hardware and software for the home energy management system; hardware for electric vehicles supply equipment and the prototype of the hybrid power electronic converter for PV and storage.
INESC TEC, in partnership with Ellevio, SAP and EDP Distribuição, developed new data-driven algorithms for the diagnostic and predictive maintenance of power transformers. INESC TEC, together with SAP, New R&D, and EDP Comercial, was also responsible for the grid and market hub software platform, capable of promoting cooperation between different stakeholders in the energy sector, such as flexibility operators/aggregators, retailers, energy efficiency service providers, consumers and the TSO, in order to advance new business models and flexibility services. Finally, INESC TEC developed, patented and demonstrated a software at the Alcântara Water Resource Recovery Facility, focused on energy optimisation of pumping systems in wastewater treatment plants.
“The InteGrid project departed from the results obtained in previous European projects (SuSTAINABLE, SENSIBLE, etc.), seeking to combine the development of new algorithms for the management of the electrical network and flexibility through digital technologies, in order to industrialise the technology and demonstrate the key benefits in real environments. Moreover, the project led to regulatory and market recommendations to facilitate the integration of active consumption management in the electricity market and the operation of the distribution network, in scenarios with high integration of renewable production. For INESC TEC, it meant materialising software and hardware from R&D concepts developed over the last 10 years, according to a strategy for the management of intellectual property and improvement of results, through integration with commercial systems”, said Ricardo Bessa, technical coordinator of the project and CPES coordinator.
With regard to scientific articles and conferences, INESC TEC contributed to nine of the 19 results achieved in this project, and submitted two patent applications to the European Patent Office.
Further details and information about the challenges faced, the objectives of the project, the technologies developed, the results obtained in each demonstrator, the scalability and replication capacity of the tested technologies, conclusions and recommendations, are available in the final book of the InteGrid project: https://www.grafe.pt/clientes/edp/Integrid-Bridging-the-Gap/3/#zoom=z
In order for all this work to be possible, INESC TEC relied on the participation of more than 30 researchers over four years, namely André Garcia, André Madureira, Ângelo Martins, António Lopes, Armando Leitão, Artur Capela, Carlos Pereira, Cláudia Abreu, David Rua, Diogo Castro, Fábio Coelho, Filipe Joel Soares, Frederico Lopes, Gil Sampaio, Henrique Teixeira, Joana Coelho, João Costa, João Silva, João Viana, Jorge Filipe, Jorge Pereira, José Villar, Leonel Dias, Luís Seca, Luís Dias, Luís Durão, Luís Guimarães, Luís Miguel Miranda, Luiz Oliveira, Micael Simões, Paulo Machado, Ricardo Andrade, Ricardo Bessa and Xavier Rodrigues.
Coordinated by EDP Distribuição, InteGrid had a total budget of around €15M, and comprehended 14 institutions from eight European countries. In addition to EDP Distribuição (project coordinator) and INESC TEC (technical coordinator), the following institutions participated in the project: Águas do Tejo Atlântico and New R&D – Centre for New Energy Technologies (Portugal), Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH and cyberGRID GmbH & Co. (Austria), Elektro Ljubljana (Slovenia), GE Grid Solutions (United Kingdom), DNV GL Netherlands, (Netherlands), KTH – Royal Institute of Technology, LocalLife and Ellevio (Sweden), IIT – Institute for Research in Technology and Comillas University (Spain) and SAP SE (Germany).
This project was funded by the EU, within the scope of the Horizon 2020 programme – under agreement number 731218.
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The INESC TEC researcheres mentioned in this news piece are associated with UP-FEUP.
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