INESC TEC and EDP will formalise R&D partnership
João Peças Lopes
The organisations will be signing a three year programme contract on Wednesday.
“Electric power will be the key area of this partnership, focusing strongly on renewable energies, smart grids, electric vehicles and electricity markets,” as explained in a press release. The EDP hopes to explore solutions that incorporate contributions from different research areas at INESC TEC, such as software, geographic information systems, sensors and robotics.
According to a press release, the goal is to benefit “from INESC TEC’s multidisciplinary features, which make it an example of private investments in R&D. The institute should develop science and technology capable of being commercially explored by all companies in the EDP group.”
According to João Peças Lopes, director of INESC TEC, “associating with a group such as the EDP is a free pass for INESC TEC to consolidate its internationalisation efforts in innovative and large projects.”
This relationship will make it possible to fund joint R&D projects that originate new products and services for the EDP. “This partnership between industry and research, a pioneer initiative in Portugal, is the result of a relationship that we have been building over the last 15 years with the EDP in the area of power systems,” João Peças Lopes explains. “Other than a proof of trust, for us this agreement is an acknowledgement of our skills as a national and international institute of reference,” he adds.
An example of that collaboration between INESC TEC and the EDP is the EDP Box, a smart meter that was implemented as part of pilot project INOVCity, in the city of Évora, Portugal. According to the press release, the device will be in the households of Portuguese energy consumers over the next five years. INESC TEC was in charge of defining the reference models and the specifications in the consortium led by the EDP, which included various Portuguese companies.
