ERA-NET Smart Grids Plus

From local trials towards a European knowledge community

ERA-Net Smart Grids Plus is an initiative of funding agencies from 20 European countries and regions, co-funded by the European Commission under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The overall goal of ERA-Net Smart Grids Plus is to support deep knowledge-sharing between European smart grids initiatives by promoting and financing joint projects. The ERA-Net Smart Grids Plus will advance the integration of smart grids system technologies, stakeholder adoption and market processes to help Europe make progress towards achieving its short-term 2020, medium-term 2035 and long-term 2050 energy targets. Cross-sectorial and interdisciplinary system innovation will be essential to realising these targets.

The challenges of modernising the electricity grids in Europe lies in enabling an increased flexibility of the European power system, efficiently providing increased transfer capacity and enabling an active participation of users and new market actors (by providing information, services, market architectures and privacy guarantees).
 
Addressing these challenges will require innovation and development in several areas such as system integration, interoperable technologies, services, tools, coordination schemes, business processes, market architectures and regulatory regimes. The purpose is to be able to plan, build, monitor, control and safely operate end-to-end networks in an open, competitive, decarbonised, sustainable and climate-change resilient market. Further, it is important that this is enabled under both normal and emergency conditions. Fragmentation of knowledge must also be addressed through accelerating knowledge exchange between demonstration projects and RD&D (Research, Development and Demonstration) initiatives, in order to develop of European wide interoperable solutions based common reference architecture. Overcoming these challenges will help realise the critical mass needed to establish a European market for smart grid technologies and services.
 
This initiative does not intend to find the final specifications for smart grids, but rather to organise learning down to regional smart grids stakeholders, beyond the piloting and demonstration phase contributing towards implementation. The overall goal of the ERA-Net Smart Grids Plus is to support deep knowledge-sharing between regional and European smart grids initiatives through financing transnational projects on applied research, piloting and demonstration in the field of smart grids, to build on the knowledge base of RD&D initiatives and R&D facilities in place at a regional, national and European level.

The essentials in brief

Program Owner / Sponsor BMK - Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology EC - European Commission
Topic
Project type
Financing
international
Submission
Einreichung nach Ausschreibungs-Prinzip
Target group Unternehmen und Forschungseinrichtungen
What is being funded ERA-Net Smart Grids Plus will promote piloting and demonstration in the field of smart grids, with a focus on validation, scale-up and replication, integrating the three research layers of Stakeholder/Adoption, Marketplace and Technology aiming at pushing solutions meeting Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs, see definitions in Annex C) 5-6 to TRLs 6-7.
Min. / max. funding 100.000 / 2 Mio €
Which costs are eligible for funding? Die Basis zur Kostenanerkennung der österreichischen ProjektpartnerInnen bildet der "Kostenleitfaden zur Behandlung der Projektkosten in Förderungsansuchen und Berichten" (Kostenleitfaden Version 2.0).
Min. / max. running time 24 - 36 months
Availability from 30.01.2015 - 15.06.2016

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