During September 2021, RINA organized a series of webinars focused on clean energy transition on islands by grouping sister projects funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme together in four separate events. The aim is to present the point of view of this principal H2020 funded projects, consolidating their collaborative approaches and meditating towards new perspectives by creating synergies.
The third webinar, titled “Islands energy transition: experience in H2020 projects – Chapter 2: renewables and energy storage technologies” took place on Friday, 17th of September 2021. The REACT project was represented in this event by Veolia Serveis Catalunya (VEO), a subsidiary company the Veolia Group acting as Project Coordinator of the REACT project, and by Fraunhofer-Institut für Solare Energiesysteme ISE (FHG), one of the REACT project’s research and concept providing partners and Europe’s largest solar energy research institution.
This webinar grouped many relevant projects around the common topic of decarbonizing islands’ energy systems, with a special focus on renewable energy resources (RES) and energy storage technologies. Each of those projects showcased their aims and objectives, underlining each of their innovative technology proposals to develop a more sustainable energy model.
Regarding the REACT project, both VEO and FHG stressed the importance of large-scale deployment of RES and storage assets on geographical islands as key enablers to bring economic benefits, contribute to decarbonize local energy systems and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In addition to maximal exploitation of RES potential and integration of innovative energy storage technologies, REACT will also deliver a scalable and adaptable cloud-based ICT platform for planning and management of RES/storage enabled infrastructure, supporting a holistic cooperative energy management strategy at the community level. All of that would be tested in on-site demonstration scenarios on each of the three project’s pilot islands: La Graciosa in the Canary Islands (Spain), San Pietro in Sardinia (Italy) and Inis Mor in the Aran Islands (Ireland).
When referring to energy storage technologies, needless to say that energy storage systems (ESS) have started to play a significant role in the electric power systems. During the webinar, the REACT project’s speakers outlined the importance of working towards national well-calibrated energy systems by solving what the World Energy Council calls “The Energy Trilemma”: energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability. In order to tackle these issues as well as several barriers in the traditional electrical energy grid, REACT will deploy new and disruptive ESS to track the progress towards many scientific and technical objectives (STOs):
- Increased RES hosting capacity coupled to large-scale energy storage deployment
- Unlock demand response (DR) potential and optimize distribution grid flexibility
- Perform lifecycle assessment and long-term plan of RES/storage enabled infrastructure
- Engage end consumers to cooperatively take an active role in the control loop
- Use the demonstrating scenarios as case studies and early adopters
- Develop effective business models ready for large-scale replication
More information on this webinar series is available here.
