David del Río shares the project details: “In Uppsala, there’s a change in the electricity scenario. Growing renewable energy penetration and an increasing population has led to grid bottlenecks. So, the municipality is exploring practices around energy flexibility to more accurately control energy demand and production to avoid shortages or even blackouts. Our project focused on demand-side flexibility (DSF), which concerns many kinds of electrical loads, such as industrial processes, heat pumps, or electric vehicles. We estimated the available amount of this DSF and recommended actions for the municipality to increase this amount by 2030. At the closure of the project, we presented our findings in the Uppsala town hall to our “clients”, the Uppsala municipality and STUNS Energi – a foundation for collaboration between the universities of Uppsala, business and society.”

“The purpose was to learn about project management in a real-life energy project – which we certainly did! We also learned to deal with several stakeholders and improve our teamwork skills. The main motivator for me was the different engineering topics. Demand-side flexibility can be achieved through so many different technologies. One of the most interesting topics was flexibility through EVs since there is much potential in the next decade and the digitalisation involved in this transition. New insights about smart meters and IoT devices are much more relevant in the solutions proposals than we had thought,” explained Tobias Steggemann. David adds, “Another important finding was how genuinely interested our EIT InnoEnergy peers are in contributing towards the energy transition. There was a deep-rooted motivation to give our best in the project.”

David reflects on what the team got from the experience: “Project management is essential for our future careers – and to learn first-hand the problems cities around Europe are having with energy flexibility gives a better perspective on tackling the energy transition. It was a unique chance to learn about a topic many of us will build a career in – since it demands many new ideas and business models now. Increasing local grids’ flexibility is essential in a pivot towfards more distributed energy production.” Tobias adds: “I think that projects with several external, industry and municipality stakeholders are not usually found in university projects. And we learned that things in real-life projects are not always the ideal model, and you often don’t have all the information you’d like. We worked a lot on assumptions and learned how to deal with uncertain outcomes – something engineers are not used to.”

When asked if their EIT InnoEnergy Master School programme gave them the confidence and skills they needed to tackle such a project, David shared, “Our studies came in handy to tackle the “technical” part. It’s easy to understand the concepts behind how a project works, but connecting the dots of all the aspects in the energy system of a whole city wouldn’t have been possible if we wouldn’t have this engineering academic background.” Tobias added, “Our studies gave us a technical background in storage technologies, energy markets, energy management and other relevant topics – and out to understand the problems holistically and research solutions. And luckily, this was not our first project. We were fortunate to have project-based learning in our first year in Técnico – one of the top engineering schools in Europe – which prepared us for this larger, final project.”

 

A final thought from David: “Probably the greatest thing about the EIT InnoEnergy programme is the network one can build during these two years. Attending conferences and events in the energy industry is a unique chance to get in touch with the most innovative companies in the sector and map them for our future careers and ventures!” So, why not start building your skills and network today? Check out our master’s programmes here.

 

 

Photo credit:
Top row (left to right): Tobias Steggemann, Jeremy Sintong, María Celaya, Omar Farouk, Tarek Husseiki, Tanmoy Roy, Andrew Aashish, Siddharth Jhajharia.
Bottom row (left to right): Kerstin Benz, David del Río
Missing in the picture: Martina Tibaldi