Over €3 billion invested in Europe’s smart grid R&D

Smart grid research and innovation has significantly increased in Europe over the past decade with a total of 407 projects supported since 2007.

Of these, 122 were R&D projects and 285 demonstration projects, with the latter increase due to the increasing maturity of technologies and solutions, as well as the growing focus on demonstrating the enabling role of smart grids in accelerating the twin digital and energy transition.

The data, which has been compiled by the EU’s Joint Research Centre, reviews smart grid projects funded by the Union under its last two FP7 and Horizon 2020 research funding programmes, as well as its competitiveness and innovation programmes on ICT and intelligent energy. Of the total €3.08 billion ($3.5 billion) invested in the projects, the EU contribution amounted to €2.32 billion ($2.6 billion), serving as a significant driver.

In most cases, projects received less than €5 million ($5.6 million) in EU support contributing on average almost three-quarters of their funding.

The study entitled, ‘Smart grids and Beyond: An EU research and innovation perspective’ included 5,986 participants at 3,130 organisations at 1,243 implementation sites in 45 countries.

Of these, 905 organisations were involved in more than one project, with the most active, a company from Germany, involved in 47 projects and the most active organisation type being research centres.

Significant differences also are observed between countries, with Spain, Germany and Italy showing the largest numbers of participations (one participation being defined as the participation of one organisation in one project) and the highest shares of collaboration links with other countries.

The study reports that most of the projects focus on demand side management, mainly in the residential sector, with others including smart cities, smart network management and integration of distributed generation and storage.

An ‘other’ category indicates increased research and innovation attention to ‘cross cutting’ issues such as cybersecurity, standardisation, development of big data platforms and the socioeconomic and other aspects of the energy transition.

Organisation types show a varied pattern of participation in the different subject domains, in line with the business sector in which they operate and their role in smart grid deployment. For example, local governments are active in the smart city and e-mobility domains, where they play a pivotal role for the transformation of city infrastructures and services.

Distribution system operators (DSOs) and transmission system operators (TSOs), traditionally active in the smart network management domain, show a high level of participation in the ‘other’ category, indicating their growing interest in these cross-cutting issues.

DSOs and TSOs increasingly collaborate with ICT and software providers, in particular in the smart network management and demand side management domains, which points to the strong commitment to digitalising their businesses but also to the key role of collaboration in the sector’s digital transformation, the report states.

The report also notes the growing presence of new entrants to the smart grid sector, with more than half of the organisations in H2020 projects being newcomers with innovative technologies and business models.