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Research and Innovation | News | 10/10/2012

FP7 - INERTIA Grant

FP7 - INERTIA Grant

Hypertech Energy Labs have been awarded a major Smart Energy Grids R&D contract from the European Commission (Project Acronym: INERTIA), as part of an international consortium of renowned industrial partners like Engineering- Ingegneria Informatica Spa, Enel.si, Hellenic Public Power Coorporation S.A., INDESIT, CNET Svenska AB and prominent research and academic organizations like CERTH-ITI and Fundacion TECNALIA Research & Innovation.

INERTIA is a STREP project (“Integrating Active, Flexible and Responsive Tertiary Prosumers into a Smart Distribution Grid”) co-funded by the EC under the FP7 Programme / Objective 2011.6.1 “Smart Energy Grids”. For a second year in the row (as in the case of Adapt4EE project proposal), Hypertech Energy Labs are part of the top ranked proposal among all others submitted in the specific call objective. The INERTIA project starting date is the 1ST of October 2012 and with a duration of 36 months and a total budget of 5,3M€.

INERTIA will introduce the Internet of Things/Services principles to the Distribution Grid Control and DSM Operations. It will develop an overlay network for efficient coordination and active grid control, running on top of the existing energy grid infrastructures and incorporating high levels of distributed intelligence within autonomous and semantically enhanced Prosumer Hubs (local consumers and producers). This way, it will address the present “structural inertia” of the Distribution Grid by introducing more active elements combined with the necessary control and distributed coordination mechanisms.

INERTIA will deliver multilevel logical nodes corresponding to dynamic clusters of semantically enhanced DER (local generation and consumption). Within INERTIA, DERs will constitute active and flexible components carrying contextual knowledge of their local environment. DER will form dynamic clusters comprising self-organized networks of active nodes that will efficiently distribute and balance global and local intelligence. This DER self-organized overlay network will allow a seamless management and control of the active grid and the optimal exploration of single and aggregated prosumer capacity (generation and consumption) to participate in energy balancing and other DG related services. Global Operational & Technical Distrbution Grid parameters will be seamlessly and continuously translated into real-time Local DSM Strategies.

INERTIA will offer fine grained control even higher than existing Direct (DLC) and Indirect (Price Based) Control Programs, while also securing privacy and autonomy on the local level, fully respecting prosumer preferences and needs. Moreover INERTIA will promote the efficient integration of flexible demand with distributed generation within the smart grid as the mean to tackle the problems resulting from the continuous and massive integration of distributed intermittent and non-controllable renewable sources. INERTIA will also deliver innovative tools for the Aggregators and propose viable Business Models for flexible service-oriented contracts distributing potential benefits to all stakeholders involved in the DSM value chain.

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