E-LAND events May & June 2022 29. June 2022

E-LAND exploitation enhancement activities kickstarted for the final project year

Multiple events were executed and many more are planned for the E-LAND project’s final year. “It feels great to be back on track of all the dissemination and exploitation activities after the long pandemic period, especially, when we have such a great set of results to present.”, remarks the E-LAND Scientific Coordinator Heidi Tuiskula.

Presentation at Schneider by Pascal Bonnefoi

The E-LAND consortium started the series of events by organizing an internal workshop on the 19^th and 20^th of May in Grenoble, France, in the headquarter of Schneider Electrics. The purpose of the workshop was to find synergies and methods of the E-LAND toolbox products to find their way to market through the Schneider Electrics ecosystem. Potential future collaborations between E-LAND partners and Schneider were discussed, as well as current market demands for energy management systems. Promising ideas were generated during the two-day event for joint exploitation, which are currently being investigated by the partners.

Another internal E-LAND workshop was held 23^rd of May, which marked the last event of the Business Model Innovation process, combined with defining engagement strategies. Results from related stakeholder engagement activities, simulation work and experiences from the pilots were compiled, analysed, and discussed. The discussions paved way for co-creating stakeholder engagement activities within the participating pilot sites. These workshops also concluded the business model innovation process for Norwegian and Spanish pilots with each of them having final business models for their respective sites. These business models will then be used for creating exploitation plans for the pilots.

On May 24^th, an internal consortium meeting was held to coordinate the ambitions and tasks for the final period. Great discussions around target KPIs, goals and impact were held, and strong focus was on developing the replication toolkit further. It was great to see strong commitment from all partners to reach the beyond expected impact and ensure other groups can replicate the results.

Tour of Walqa Technology Park

On May 25^th, the E-LAND project hosted a workshop at Walqa Technology Park with the purpose of giving other energy communities or energy islands a thorough understanding of the E-LAND toolbox and the results of implementing it in the setting of a technology park. Participants were guided through exercises of the Technology Tools, the Business Modelling Tool, and the Common impact model tool, toured the Walqa Technology Park, and were given a presentation of the story of Walqa and the Spanish regulations regarding energy communities. Thus, participants left well acquainted with the E-LAND toolbox in the setting of a Technology Park in Spain.

On June 9^th E-Land held a workshop with the consortium partner CREESC in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The aim of the workshop was to present the E-Land project and the tools developed to a local audience, including business representatives, universities, and local and national authorities, and to discuss the potential of such tools to be implemented in a Romanian context. A representative from the municipality presented local climate targets and action lines to further enable the discussion. This initiated a lively conversation about the current political and legislative context regarding the energy transition and energy communities in Romania, and the needs of small and medium size businesses interested to working in the sector. While there is a general interest in switching towards a greener economy, more clear regulation is needed from the SME perspective for them to be able to join the transition.

E-LAND presentation at REMforum

On June 24th, E-LAND participated in the 12th St.Gallen Forum for Management of Renewable Energies, an annual international conference for practitioners, academics and policy-makers at the University of St.Gallen (Switzerland). This year, the Forum focused on the social acceptance of renewable energies and ambitious climate policies. E-LAND, in collaboration with the H2020 project ACCEPT, contributed with a workshop on “B2B energy communities”, led by Beatrice Petrovich (University of St.Gallen). The workshop presented learnings for local stakeholders’ engagement drawn from two real cases where a group of neighbouring energy users, including commercial and industrial ones, aim to collectively self-consume locally produced renewable energy. Minna Kuivalainen (Smart Innovation Norway) presented the E-LAND pilot site WALQA Technology Park in Spain, while Daniele Farrace (AEM) illustrated the ARENA Innovation Community in Switzerland, one of the living labs of the ACCEPT project.

Insightful suggestions on designing local energy systems that meet local stakeholders’ views, values and preferences were gathered during an interactive case study work with 24 workshop participants from all over Europe.

E-LAND consortium has multiple events still planned for the rest of the year, where results of the project are discussed and presented, so stay tuned on our website and social medias here: