The ELECTRA (European Liaison on Electricity Committed Towards long-term Research Activity) Integrated Research Programme on Smart Grids brought together the partners of the EERA Joint Programme on Smart Grids (JP SG) to reinforce and accelerate Europe's medium to long term research cooperation in this area and to drive a closer integration of the research programmes of the participating organisations and of the related national programmes. ELECTRA's joint research activity and collaborative support actions built on an established track record of collaboration and engagement.
- Start date: 1 December 2013
- End date: 28 February 2018
- Total cost: € 13 125 740,00
- EU contribution: € 9 989 560,00
- Coordinated by: Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico - RSE SpA (Italy)
- 21 participants
- Find out more on CORDIS here
Together, the JP SG and ELECTRA established significant coherence across national research efforts critical to the stable operation of the EU power system of 2020+. The EU energy strategy set ambitious goals for the energy systems of the future that foresees a substantial increase in the share of renewable electricity production.
The whole-sale deployment of Renewable Energy Resources connected to the network at all voltage levels required radically new approaches for real time control that can accommodate the coordinated operation of millions of devices, of various technologies, at many different scales and voltage levels, dispersed across EU grid. ELECTRA addressed this challenge, and established and validated proofs of concept that utilise flexibility from across traditional boundaries in a holistic fashion. The Electra consortium believed that a new control concept was needed and set out to develop and test vertically-integrated control schemes reinforced with horizontally-distributed control schemes to provide for a dynamic power balance closer to its equilibrium value than a conventional central control scheme.
In addition to the joint R&D activities, coordination work packages in ELECTRA built on existing efforts established through EERA and significantly escalated these through the coordination and collaboration amongst EU leading research infrastructures, researchers exchange across EU and internationally, and actions on international cooperation. The support received at proposal stage from 16 national funding agencies, ENTSOE, EDSO4SG, ETP SG, T&D Europe as well as from a number of international organisations had been developed to leverage the research effort in ELECTRA and to strengthen its exploitation potential.
The final event of the ELECTRA project was organized in San Donato (Italy) on the 21st and 22nd February 2018. It was a two-day workshop: key experts from the ELECTRA team presented the main outcomes of the ELECTRA project and discussed with relevant stakeholders of the European smart grids community the next steps needed in view of the deployment of the project results.
