Smart Grid projects play a key role in shedding some light on how to move forward in this challenging transition. To this end, in 2011, the JRC launched the first comprehensive inventory of Smart Gird projects in Europe to collect lessons learned and assess current developments on Smart Grids in Europe [JRC 2011]. The final catalogue was published in July 2011 and included 219 Smart Grid and smart metering projects from EU27 Member States (including 24 smart metering pilots and roll-outs). The overall investment amounted to € 5 billion.
The participation of project coordinators and the reception of the report by the Smart Grid community were extremely positive. For this reason, it has been decided to carry out the project inventory on a regular basis to constantly update the picture of Smart Grid developments in Europe and keep track of lessons learned, challenges and opportunities. This study is the 2012 update of the inventory carried out in 2011.
A new on-line questionnaire was put on-line in March 2012 and projects were collected until September 2012. In parallel we have performed an extensive and scrupulous search of projects information through web research and cooperation links with European research organizations. The resulting final database is the most updated and comprehensive inventory of Smart grid and smart metering projects in Europe for 2012: it includes 281 Smart Grid projects and around 90 smart metering pilots and roll-outs. Smart Grid and smart metering projects will be analysed separately.
The core of our analysis will focus on Smart Grid projects. Smart metering development will be analysed only at aggregated national and European level and information from individual smart metering projects will be used only to support the analysis with concrete field information .