The company from Murcia gives a brief review of the status of the innovation projects it is currently working on, and the progress that has been made in the complicated 2020-2021 social period. We spoke with Pablo Barrachina and Ramón Ruiz, heads of the company's R&D&I department, to offer an analysis of the progress of the projects, to see what challenges have arisen, and what the near future holds for the company.
Innovation and development in times of pandemics
The last year has been a complex period in everyone's life due to the social and economic situation caused by the global pandemic. It has been a year in which the marketer has had to adapt in order to be able to continue to carry out its daily activities in a "normal" way. This has marked the way in which private companies and public institutions develop their research, development and innovation activities. All the companies and entities that collaborate within the H2020 Program, promoted by the European Union to respond to environmental objectives, have adapted their agendas, their way of working and their internal operation, to provide an effective solution that would allow them to maintain the programmed itineraries in the development of each project.
At the operational level, teleworking and remote management systems have been implemented, limiting direct contact with the participants of the pilot tests as much as possible, always applying anti-COVID measures to ensure the safety of all members participating in the projects. At the organizational level, a more than interesting advance has been achieved in the field of innovation management, since all the advances have been concentrated within the organizations of the participating entities, but guaranteeing a flow of communication and cooperation among all to jointly analyze and develop the advances obtained in each work nucleus.
A year of research and development challenges
This year and 2020 have been two good years in R&D investment for Spain, reaching the highest levels of investment in this field in recent years (1.47% of GDP), but still far from the levels of other European economies. This increase in investment has not managed to avoid the burden that weighs on the application of these funds and the regularity with which they develop R&D processes in SMEs, which still maintain a large gap in activity compared to that of institutions and large companies. This, together with the lack of digital training of employees dedicated to this research process, or the disparity of adequate infrastructures by region, necessary to maximize the effect of these funds in the business environment, are seen as the three main challenges still facing innovation in small businesses in Spain.
Two points of view on research and development in MIWenergía
According to Pablo Barrachina, R+D Manager at MIWenergía, "the support and funding we receive from the European Commission is an economic and technical reinforcement to be able to face the challenges we face when implementing advances and innovations that we develop for European projects and that we then pass on in a better service for our customers".
On the other hand, Ramón Ruiz, Project Manager of MIWenergía comments that "there is still a lot of potential to develop in the field of energy in Spain and Europe. We are at the beginning of a process of profound transformation that will completely change the way we consume and understand the European electricity market".
The R&D&I projects of the H2020 program in detail
The Horizon 2020 program continues to make unstoppable progress towards achieving the research and innovation objectives set in various areas of the European context. For this reason, we offer a brief summary of the degree of achievement of the projects development projects in which MIWenergía participates.
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DRIMPAC
Final stretch for the project DRIMPACThe aim of the project was to provide a technological framework to facilitate interaction between the electricity grid and users, achieving greater flexibility in energy demand and more competitive energy prices for the consumer. The project will end in August 2022, and during this last year practically all the devices have been installed in residential homes and offices. At the beginning of the last quarter of 2021, user applications will be available that will allow users to control the new devices and monitor their consumption. Once it is up and running, users will be informed, explaining how it works, and then the demonstration phase of the solution will be developed.[/vc_column][/vc_row].
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PHOENIX
Almost a year has passed since the project started in September 2020. The implementation phase has just ended in the pilot test at the University of Murcia, where the solutions and services that will be applied to the rest of the pilots will be tested. During the last quarter of the year, it is expected to start developing the pilot tests in the rest of the planned locations. On the technical side, we are working on the acquisition of new devices to improve the SRI (Building Intelligence Indicator), and to allow users to have greater control of their installations and to participate in the electricity market through demand response actions.[/vc_column][/vc_row][/vc_row].
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ACCEPT
First semester of project life completed. During these months we have worked on the development of business models and use cases. use cases that will be tested in the different pilots. Communication material has also been developed for end users and collaborators. The Murcian pilot has already pre-selected the 50 residential users that will participate in the project. The next step for the pilot will be to conduct an audit of the selected users and then proceed with the planning of the acquisition and installation of devices.[/vc_column][/vc_row][/vc_row].
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GrEnFIn
This week the 5th Project Meeting took place, where the progress made during the first half of the project was evaluated. The experiences of the second Summer School for students and the first edition of the Summer Training for professionals, held online last June due to the impossibility of holding it in person, as planned from the beginning, in the city of Katowice, have also been evaluated. The outcome of both events has been very positive and valuable information has been gathered to continue improving the final product of the project. In these courses, MIWenergia has participated as a speaker in the Summer School, explaining the functioning of the electricity market and the actors involved in it; and in the Summer Training explaining the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of Spain, as well as participating as a student.[/vc_column][/vc_row].
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UtilitEE
In April the UtilitEE project, the first H2020 project in whichproject, the first H2020 project in which MIWenergía participated as a partner in a European project, was completed in April. The project has achieved very promising data for the first version of the proposed solution. The pilots showed great interest in the development and testing of the project, and good energy savings data were achieved. All this was reported in the Handbook of the project.
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Pharaon
Pharaon reaches the halfway point of its implementation, which enters the final period of adaptation and development of individual technologies for integration into the overall solution. MIWenergía is adapting its monitoring solutions and services (uGRID and MIW+) to process information from IoT devices in real time, and extract information from it, always with the main purpose of improving the care and attention of the elderly. By analyzing electrical consumption along with other data, alerts and events related to possible health problems will be generated to inform caregivers and health personnel of the Murcian Health Service. The pre-pilot is scheduled to begin in September, with the rest of the technologies to be deployed in November. In this way, the complete solution will be tested during the rest of the project, and the correlation of the energy domain with the health domain will be validated.[/vc_column][/vc_row][/vc_row].
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PRECEPT
The PRECEPT project is nine months old. The initial stage of the study of the systems to be used for the global solution to be offered in the pilot projects has been completed, and the partners-providers will soon select the participants who will take part in the study in each of the pilot tests to be carried out in Greece, the Netherlands, Germany, Ukraine and Spain. In addition, the current building stock of the buildings participating in the pilot tests has already been analyzed and solutions to achieve reductions in energy consumption have already been proposed. Additionally, work is being done to digitize the residential areas in BIM models, which will be used in the collaborative platform to know the energy situation of the pilot in real time.[/vc_column][/vc_row][/vc_column][/vc_row].
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DataVaults
Personal data are becoming more and more important among their real owners. During this first phase we have worked on the definition of the platform, the needs of both data-providers and data-seekers, and we have defined the functionalities of each pilot, being in an intermediate stage of the project, soon will be available a first version of the platform with which the first tests will be performed without users to test the functionality of the platform. From MIWenergía an API has been developed to connect the users' energy data with the platform. Thanks to this, users will enjoy free of charge the design of their photovoltaic installation, together with recommendations for energy savings.[/vc_column][/vc_row].
What does the immediate future hold for R&D at MIWenergía?
The energy company continues on its path of integrating innovations in all processes that affect the company's operations. It is working on both European innovation projects and internal innovations, making efforts in two directions: implementations in the services currently being offered to customers and collaborators, and forging new synergies to bring new products and services to the market to complete the comprehensive range of energy services offered in the company's portfolio.
Among these implementations we can highlight:
- MIW+. Good progress is being made to bring the second version of the energy management platform to the market. This platform has already demonstrated its good performance and usefulness for customers. In fact, this past April it was recognized as the best energy management platform of the year at the VIVIENDA 2021 awards given by the newspaper La Razón.
- A new version of this energy manager is being finalized, which will be very useful to optimize energy consumption and help you save almost an additional 20% on your electricity bills thanks to multi-point monitoring.
Pablo Barrachina, R+D Manager of MIWenergía
"Our objective for this year is to undertake new R&D&I projects within the Horizon Europe Program, in order to continue contributing our knowledge of energy in the multiple facets that it addresses. We must focus our efforts, as an energy trader, on helping the energy transition process and accelerating the process of decarbonization of the European economy as much as possible. This will also require the active participation of consumers, companies and local institutions involved in generating the appropriate framework to promote this change in the electricity market". He also added that "this is a process whose strategy must involve all participants. The global strategy must be accompanied by a correct structuring of local strategies so that the transformation process does not go at different speeds of implementation".
Ramón Ruiz, Project manager at MIWenergía and Photovoltaic Self-consumption Specialist
"There is still much to be done in the digitalization, monitoring and optimization of photovoltaic self-consumption. Over the next few years we will focus on continuing to innovate in these aspects, also addressing management strategies with energy prosumers." To which he adds, "prosumers are a key figure within the future scheme that will shape the Spanish energy system, on which MIWenergía will focus a large part of its developments, both internally and by cooperating within the programs encompassed in Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe. The use of storage technologies is already being encouraged by the government. Distributed generation and storage are key to improving the electricity grid and transforming it into a smart grid which, together with the current reform of data access and the evolution of the electricity metering system, will be key to meeting the current challenges facing the sector".
