The UPGRID project included 4 demonstrators that are being deployed from April 2015 to June 2017 at Bilbao area in the North of Spain, Parque das Nações in Lisbon (Portugal), Åmål in Dalsland in the South of Sweden, and Gdynia in Pomeranian Region (Poland).

VPP4Islands aims to facilitate the integration of renewable systems, accelerate the transition towards smart and green energy and help Islands to exploit energy efficiency potential and innovative storage approaches, foster the active participation of citizens and become self-sufficient in energy, while reducing costs, GHG emissions and reliance on heavy fuel oil to generate power, and creating new intelligent business, growth and local skilled jobs.

The project will provide a set of solutions and technologies to increase the smartness, stability and security of an open, consumer-centric European energy grid. The project will combine an enhanced use of storage technologies, a highly increased share of RES and the integration of charging infrastructure to favour the large-scale deployment of electric vehicles.

The project aims to design, develop and demonstrate a set of tools to integrate the emerging decentralized ecosystem of RES and flexibility systems into the existing European energy system, efficiently and cost-effectively, to create a more stable, secure, and sustainable smart grid, with special attention to extreme weather conditions.