The Horizon 2020 project INVADE is one of the largest European research and innovation projects in the field of smart grid, charging and energy storage. INVADE had its final review in Brussels earlier this year, which marked the successful completion of the prestigious three-year R&D-project.

Largest Norwegian-led EU Project

The European Union has set ambitious goals for reduction of greenhouse gas emission and for increase of renewable energy share. It is these global challenges that were the driving force for initiating the project. 

The INVADE project is to date the largest Norwegian-led EU project within energy, consisting of 12 European partners, of which 5 are Norwegian. The result: a brand new cloud-based flexibility management system that changes the way energy is produced, consumed and stored.  

“INVADE has proven that today’s technologies and solutions can be utilized in new ways. There has been a strong focus on innovation of component integration and technology adaptation
throughout the project. We have combined IoT-devices and big data management with digital intelligence through machine learning models and advanced optimization methods. The result is a powerful tool that can be used in several contexts,” explains Stig Ødegaard, Head of R&D at eSmart Systems. 

The Integrated INVADE Platform

eSmart Systems is the provider of the Integrated INVADE platform which is used by all five pilots. The platform, which is hosted in Microsoft Azure, finds the optimal way to use the available energy flexibility at the pilot sites. It visualizes and predicts available flexibility, optimizes how it should be used, and sends the optimized plans to individual controllable devices at the pilot sites.  

“The whole project group has cooperated well and worked together towards a common goal - we have gained valuable insight by cooperating closely with the project partners,” adds Lundby. 

Successful Pilot Stories

The pilots in INVADE have in different ways explored the potential of energy storage at various levels in the distribution grid. The three-year R&D project has resulted in successful pilot stories for all the five pilots: 

• Albena AD in Bulgaria 
• Estabanell Energia in Spain 
• GreenFlux and ElaadNL in the Netherlands 
• Lyse in Norway 
• Badenova in Germany. 

Learn more about the pilots here.

INVADE partner companies

Smart Innovation Norway AS (NO, coordinator), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – CITCEA (ES), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NO), Teknologian tutkimuskeskus VTT oy (FI), Badenova AG & Co. KG (DE), Albena JsCo (BG), Schneider Electric Norway AS (NO), Lyse Elnett AS (NO), Estabanell y Pahisa Energia, S.A. (ES), ElaadNL (NL) and GreenFlux Assets B.V. (NL) and eSmart Systems AS (NO). 

Read also:

• “INVADE is a significant project for us”