European Utility Week — IRENA Innovation Session: Spreading Innovation for the Power Sector Transformation Globally
As part of European Utility Week 2017, IRENA co-hosted a session on innovations for the power sector transformation that are emerging in Europe and changing the role of utilities. The session showcased emerging experiences and innovative practices in business models and enabling technologies that support the power sector's transformation towards a more decentralised and renewables-based system. Such innovations lead to cost reductions for these technologies, and to new approaches to operate power systems, enabling a 100% variable renewable energy mix in the system.
Multiple success stories were presented and their replicability and relevance at the global scale were discussed. The session included the following presentations:
Introductory presentation:
- Spreading Innovation for the Power Sector Transformation Globally, presented by Mr Dolf Gielen, Director of IRENA Innovation and technology Centre
Success stories presentations:
- CrowdNett – Virtual Power Plant of Aggregated Home Batteries, presented by Mr Dirk-Jan Middelkoop, Manager solar and storage, Eneco
- The Parker Project – Grid Integrated Electric Vehicles, presented by Mr Peter Bach Andersen, Senior researcher, Technical University of Denmark
- Sectoral Integration of Energy & Transport, presented by Jan Cupal, Business Development, VERBUND Solution GmbH
- SolarCoin – Blockchain in the Energy Sector, presented by François Sonnet, Co-Founder, ElectriCChain
Through this session, IRENA has initiated an open dialogue between stakeholders, including the private sector and policy makers, to foster innovation for the energy transformation. This session provided valuable input to the upcoming IRENA Innovation Landscape Report for the Power Sector Transformation, which aims to increase awareness among policy makers about emerging innovations and provide guidance on the best options to suit country and needs.
