InterConnect was presented as one of the new projects participating in this European Commission initiative, which unites Horizon 2020 Smart Grid and Energy Storage Projects.

“Participating in BRIDGE is a huge opportunity for InterConnect to stand out and strengthen collaboration with other projects that could help us achieve our goals, namely in the definition of interoperable strategies and solutions for homes, buildings and grids” states David Rua, project leader.

The BRIDGE process fosters continuous knowledge sharing amongst projects thus allowing them to deliver conclusions and recommendations about the future exploitation of the project results, with a single voice, through four different Working Groups representing the main areas of interest: data management, business models, regulations, customer engagement.

“InterConnect has appointed experts to all the Working Groups (WG) and Task Forces of BRIDGE, to tackle cross-cutting issues based on its experience of building user-centric and interoperable smart grids, smart buildings and smart homes”, adds David Rua.

In particular, InterConnect will lead the new task on Interoperability inside the Data Management WG, to develop guidance and best practices enabling interoperability at both function and information layers. InterConnect will also bring its design thinking and co-creation methodologies to the Customer Engagement WG, as a key input to achieve user-centric systems and to foster customer and citizen engagement. Business Models WG will have as well the contribution of InterConnect in identifying new or innovative business models. Regulatory frameworks will be addressed by Interconnect partners in Regulation WG to identify the limitations and opportunities to ensure interoperability across several domains. Finally, InterConnect will also be represented in the task forces Energy Communities, Replicability/Scalability Analysis and Joint Communication.

The project is divided into eleven work groups. INESC TEC is the project coordinator and, for that reason, is responsible for the management work package. It also has the leadership of the work groups related to the large-scale demonstration and integration of solutions and the communication, dissemination and exploitation of the results of the project. The Dutch R&D institution TNO, which is InterConnect’s technical and innovation coordinator, is also responsible for a work group called “Interoperability in smart homes and grid reference architecture”.