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BRIDGE showcased at ENLIT Europe 2022 and ensured the participation of around 30 of its projects

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Tuesday. 29 November 2022

Bridge and the ETIP SNET made a key contribution to the organisation of the EU Project Zone and the related policy and project sessions at ENLIT Europe, the 3-day conference this year hosted in Frankfurt and devoted to collaboration and innovation to solve the most pressing energy-related issues.

 

As in the previous editions, Bridge, together with the ETIP SNET, played a crucial role in the organisation of the EU Project Zone of ENLIT Europe 2022, the 3-day conference where energy professionals from around the world come together to collaborate and innovate. The event in which the two European Commission (EC)’s initiatives took part for the fifth time in a row was held this time in Frankfurt, Germany, from 28 to 30 November. It was widely attended, with more than 15,000 participants, 700 exhibitors, and 500 speakers.

The EU Project Zone

Bridge and the ETIP SNET worked with ENLIT organisers to set up the EU Project Zone, a space to present the initiatives and the numerous EU-funded projects working on Smart Grid, Energy Storage, Islands, and Digitalisation Projects and contributing to the deployment of renewable sources of energy as well as the digitalisation of the energy system. Besides their contribution that brought together several energy-related projects – among which roughly 30 belonging to Bridge, the two initiatives had three corners of the EU Project Zone for, respectively, the ETIP SNET, new Bridge projects, and the ETIPs FORUM.

Besides, the several Bridge projects that had their own booth in the Zone, Bridge showcased 5 of its most recent projects in the Zone’s corner dedicated to the Bridge EU projects, namely: BeFlexible, DATA CELLAR, ELECTRON, ENERSHARE and NESOI.

Furthermore, the EC initiative organised the session below in which Bridge’s Working Groups and projects spoke:

How to react to the energy crisis – fostering R&I activities, scaling up innovative solutions, and ensuring their market uptake

This session brought together Bridge Chairs for the Working Groups on Regulation (Helena Gerard), Business models (Andrej Gubina), and Data Management (Olivier Genest). To achieve the Green Deal objectives, EU Member States (MSs) need to fasten their energy technologies development. The European energy system is not ready enough (cost-competitive-wise) and needs to be quickly adapted. Given the current emergency crisis in Ukraine that is having a strong impact on energy, MSs need to react quickly to tackle rising prices and supply scarcity. In this context, fostering R&I activities, scaling up innovative solutions, and ensuring their market uptake are instrumental. This panel approached three key topics, namely, integration, digitalisation, and flexibility from the Bridge initiative’s project and policy perspective.

 

In addition to the above, Bridge and the ETIP SNET organised also the following sessions:

1 - Digitalisation of the energy system - a key challenge with a high impact on the entire energy value chain

This session, moderated by Luis Cunha, ETIP SNET Vice-Chair, saw the participation of Vincent Berrutto, Head of Unit DG ENER B5, that discussed the 'Digitalisating the energy system - EU action plan', the plan the EC adopted in October 2022, aiming to contribute to the EU energy policy objectives by supporting the development of a sustainable, (cyber)secure, transparent and competitive market for digital energy services, ensuring data privacy and sovereignty, and supporting investment in digital energy infrastructure. The Action Plan was presented during the session by the EC, while ETIP SNET representatives contributed with a general view and position with respect to the Plan in the next future with a focus on how the ETIP SNET will go to face the raised challenges by the Action Plan – also presenting the TSO and DSO cooperation point of view. Finally, the EUniversal project presented its results.

Check out the agenda and the slides of the session.

 

2-The new SET PLAN: the connection with the ETIPs and IWGs

The European Commission launched the renewal process of the Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET Plan) - which final version should be released in Q1 2023. While the SET Plan will continue providing a common vision, goals, and coordination for accelerating the development and deployment of efficient and cost-competitive low-carbon energy technologies across Europe, its objectives, governance, scope, and activities should be revised to fully fit the Green Deal and the REPowerEU objectives. The main driver of the process is to strengthen the alignment of high-level objectives: a) renewing policy aims and targets for the development of innovative clean energy solutions and preparing for their deployment and b) pooling national and European research & innovation resources. The role of the ETIPs in this process and their contribution to the work of the SET PLAN IWGs is crucial. To foster ETIPs' participation and role in achieving a series of ambitious climate targets, the ETIPs FORUM issued 8 recommendations on the Plan’s future content and governance. During this session, and in view of the upcoming renewal of the SET Plan, these key messages will be strengthened and further discussed. Among the speakers of the session were the representatives of the ETIP SNET, SNETP, ETIP Hydropower, ETIP Deep Geothermal, and EERA.

Check out the agenda of the session.

 

4 - Flexibility for Resilience - How can flexibility support power grids resilience?

Among the speakers of this session, moderated by Natalie Samovich, ETIP SNET WG1 Chair, was Karsten Krause, Policy Officer of DG ENER Unit B5. By analysing power system-related challenges and solutions, the ETIP SNET and ISGAN ANNEX6 published in March 2022 the white paper “Flexibility for resilience How can flexibility support power grids resilience?”, which provides a consolidated view and input for R&D activities and innovation projects on power system flexibility and resilience. More specifically, the publication analyses how to design and exploit flexibility sources and mechanisms for increasing overall system resilience. This includes technology, market and regulatory aspects of transmission and distribution systems, as well as the coupled energy sectors. The panel discussion focused on these topics, while the project iFLEX presented some key results also used in the Paper, nourishing the panel discussion.

Check out the agenda and the slides of the session.

 

5 - Smart charging: a win-win solution, not a Trade-Off

Among the speakers of this session, moderated by Santiago Gallego, ETIP SNET WG1 Co-Chair, was Karsten Krause, Policy Officer of DG ENER Unit B5. Electrification is increasingly becoming an essential driver in many transport areas. The ETIP SNET will present the outcomes of the recently published white paper “E-mobility deployment and impact on grids”, which addresses the grid impact that electric vehicles can have in electricity networks through their charging process and, therefore, it is mainly focused on those aspects which are foreseen as being more impactful:

Sector: Road transport. Vehicles: Light Commercial and Heavy-Duty vehicles. Technology: Battery-propelled vehicles. Charging infrastructure: Conductive, stationary charging systems.

The projects XFlex, INTERCONNECT, ReDREAM presented some key results and nourished the panel discussion around Smart charging as a win-win solution, not a trade-off.

Check out the agenda and the slides of the session.

 

6 – ETIP SNET 15th Regional Workshop

The ETIP SNET Regional Workshops aim to identify unsolved R&I topics and monitor the implementation of research and innovation (R&I) activities at national and regional levels within the EU, ensuring consistency between national and European views and stimulating knowledge-sharing between stakeholders and among Member States and associated countries.

The main goal of the 15th ETIP SNET Regional Workshop was to learn more about national and regional R&I priorities within the EU Member States (MSs) and to what extent they are aligned with the R&I priorities at the EU level. National and Regional projects and funding programmes from South-Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Romania and Slovenia) - addressing energy system integration issues - have been presented.

A specific exercise was done to map the R&I priorities at national and regional levels and align them with the 9 High Level Use Cases (HLUCs) introduced in the ETIP SNET R&I Implementation Plan 2021-2025, and which will be part of the upcoming ETIP SNET Roadmap 2022-2031.

Key conclusions and recommendations of this event will be released soon and will serve as a base for further analysis and discussion with policymakers at European, national and regional levels.

Among the speakers of the 15th Regional Workshop were the moderator Ludwig Karg, ETIP SNET representatives, Nikos Hatziargyriou and Rainer Bacher from the ETIP SNET Core Team, Maria Laura Trifiletti, ETIP SNET coordinator, and Venizelos Efthymiou, FOSS, Cyprus.

Check out the agenda and the slides of the session.


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