The 2021 BRIDGE General Assembly (GA) took place online on March 2nd, 3rd and 4th, presenting the latest developments of the initiative.

With a full agenda several members of European projects had the opportunity to present the latest activities by the BRIDGE Working Groups and Task Forces, the results and lessons learned from ended projects and to learn about new BRIDGE projects.

BRIDGE is a European Commission initiative which unites Horizon 2020 Smart Grid, Energy Storage, Islands, and Digitalisation Projects to create a structured view of cross-cutting issues which are encountered in the demonstration projects and may constitute an obstacle to innovation.

The initiative is structured with four permanent Working Groups – Data Management, Business Model, Regulation and Customer Engagement – charged with preparing reports and formulating recommendations for the European Commission on various themes linked to the future of the energy sector.
Besides that, also promotes three Task Forces to work on specific topics: Energy Communities, Replicability/Scalability Analysis and Joint Communication.

At this year GA, EUniversal project was represented by José Pablo Chaves from Comillas at the Work Group Regulation session and presented the deliverable 5.1 “Identification of relevant market mechanisms for the procurement of flexibility needs and grid services”.

This deliverable identifies the available options that Distribution Systems Operator (DSO) have, to acquire flexibility. Both market and non-market-based alternatives are considered. However, the focus is mainly on the former, since in compliance with the Directive non-market-based solutions should be an option only when economic efficiency cannot be guaranteed.

The deliverable addresses this requirement by analysing different mechanisms to acquire grid services. The suitability of each of them is assessed considering relevant context attributes related to the DSO need and the Flexible Service Providers (FSP); and following a series of evaluation criteria.

The work presented on EUniversal project is fully aligned with BRIDGE main recommendations on processes and solutions regarding content harmonization, data exchange, interoperability and the development of universal solutions that can serve any context and domain.

During the GA, several parallel sessions were also promoted to strengthen the collaboration between projects and discuss about future BRIDGE topics in 2021.