On October 1, European Research Project RESOLVD (Renewable penetration levered by Efficient Low Voltage Distribution grids) that will last 35 months was initiated. It’s coordinated by the research group eXiT (Control Engineering and Intelligent Systems) from Institut d’Informàtica I Aplicacions (http://iiia.udg.edu) of the University of Girona. RESOLVD is a collaborative project that is part of the European HORIZON 2020 strategy in research and innovation (RIA), which was selected from 82 proposals and has a budget of 3.8M €.

The consortium, coordinated by the UdG, has two Catalan partners (the CITCEA center of UPC and the distributor Estabanell Energía), an Austrian research center (Joanneum Research), a large Greek ICT company (Intracom), a Spin off (Comsensus) and a Norwegian innovation center (Smart Innovation Norway).

The project aims to facilitate the installation of renewable generation in the low voltage electricity network through better management of the network and energy flows. To do this, an electronic device that will be connected to the distribution network and will have the capacity to manage the storage of energy from renewable generation will be developed in order to be able to release energy when the demand of the consumers is higher and at the same time will be able to balance and compensate for variations of the voltage of the network offering a better quality of supply.

This will facilitate the local consumption of renewable generation and will avoid the transportation of energy generated in large production centers away from consumption, contributing to a much more efficient energy system. The performance of this device will be supported by a better observation of the network and artificial intelligence algorithms that from this information will allow on the one hand to predict demand and power generation at critical points in the network and on the other to operate the network in an optimal way and the energy flows with different time horizons.

The project is therefore part of the Smart Grid concept and aims to transform existing electricity networks into much more efficient and safe networks as a necessary and essential measure to face the energy transition towards a sustainable energy model based on renewable generation.

On the 17 and 18 October, the project’s launch meeting was held at the Polytechnic School of the University of Girona with the participation of researchers from the seven institutions and representatives of the European Commission.