The islands, heavily dependent on the continental energy market, suffer from several obstacles in the traditional power grid model, including an over-reliance on fossil fuels and imported energy.
In addition, islands, due to their tourism activities, have highly variable seasonal load profiles.
Predicting, monitoring and managing variable load profiles is essential.
If combined with energy storage technology and a greater share of renewable energy, islands could benefit from greener, more stable and resilient power grids.
REACT is a 4-year research project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 Programme.
Its objective is to achieve island energy independence through renewable energy generation and storage, a demand response platform, and promoting user engagement in a local energy community.
An integrated & digitalised Smart Grid
A cloud-based ICT solution that integrates high-flexibility distributed generation technologies, demand response, and energy storage to provide 100% potential energy autonomy.
REACT will integrate knowledge gained from previous R&D activities with commercially available technologies to form a viable solution that will reduce GHG emissions, adapt to energy needs, and be easily replicated across the EU island community.
REACT is developing a technical and business model to demonstrate that these technologies can bring economic benefits, contribute to the decarbonisation of local energy systems, reduce GHG emissions, and improve environmental air quality.
Equipments are deployed on pilot islands
To demonstrate and replicate the REACT solution, the project gathers island community representatives, regional authorities, DSO/ESCO, technology providers, academia and RTO’s from 11 countries: Spain, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Greece, United Kingdom, France, and Serbia. They have assembled as clusters of partners around the pilot sites and follower islands to cover different climatic and socio-economic regions and with the necessary expertise for its technological deployment and integration.
