OREANDA-NEWS. The EU's electricity grids are still largely designed around the needs of traditional, fossil fuel power stations. But, with a rapidly rising renewable energy supply, EU grids need modern, smart grid solutions to help integrate more variable and geographically-dispersed power sources.

One EU-funded project, GRID4EU, has worked on ways to integrate renewables. It has tested the potential of smart grids for integrating renewable energy, grid automation, energy storage and energy efficiency.

GRID4EU has six testing sites across Europe in Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the Czech Republic and France.

In Germany, Nordrhien Westphalen, GRID4EU focussed on improving the monitoring and advanced control of the medium voltage using a Multi-Agent-System. In Italy, Emilia Romagna, the project used energy storage batteries to smooth out electricity supply and demand flows in the network.