Smart Grid Projects Outlook 2014

This report presents the latest analyses and insights from the most comprehensive database of smart grid projects across the European Union (EU) Member States. This rolling review, carried out on a periodical basis by the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) in tight cooperation with the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy (ENER), builds upon the previous two smart grid project inventorying exercises published since 2011a.

The 2014 edition of the inventory features also some highlights from the forthcoming "Benchmarking smart metering deployment in the EU-27 with a focus on electricity" and accompanying Staff Working Documents, prepared by DG JRC and DG ENER. The 3 documents provide an overview of progress of smart metering roll-out in the EU along with detailed Country-specific information on investments and costs assumptions adopted in national CBAs.

The current edition of the survey includes a total of 459 smart grid projects, launched from 2002 up until today, amounting to €3.15 billion investment. This study goes hand in hand with brand new interactive visualisation tools allowing the user to generate customisable maps, graphs and charts to track progress on smart grid projects realised in the 27 EU Member States (EU-27), plus UK, Switzerland and Norway.

The on-line questionnaire was updated in August 2013. In this report only the projects submitted by January 2014 were considered. The on-line questionnaire remains open for the next edition of the inventory. In parallel we conducted a thorough and extensive search of project information on-line and through participation in conferences and workshops. We then contacted project coordinators directly to ask for more information on the on-line form. Data collected from respondents were double-checked in various ways to ensure consistency. For all projects we checked the website of the project (where applicable) and of the lead organisation to corroborate the information we received. Where discrepancies were found or the template was not clear enough, we also contacted the lead organisation by e-mail or phone. Based on the data validation process, some projects have been omitted, as the data was considered not sufficiently reliable. These projects, along with projects not yet included/known/started, will be considered for inclusion in the next edition of the report, provided that reliable/complete information is delivered. As mentioned before, all the aggregations done for 2013 may be incomplete (this is applicable for all starting years, but in a lesser degree), since some projects are advertised later in their lifetime. This is why most of the aggregations for 2013 show a decline in number or investment compared to 2012

Other extracts from the "Executive summary"

• The catalogue includes around 210 R&D projects with a total budget of around €830 million and around 250 demonstration projects with a total budget of around €2300 million.
• The projects surveyed have an average budget of € 7.5 million and an average duration of 33 months.
• Half of the projects are still ongoing running a budget over €2000 million.
• There is a good level of diversity in the smart grid landscape: several types of organisations (universities, TSOs, DSOs, manufacturers, ICT companies, etc.) participate to significant degrees in the smart grid projects.
• 1670 organisations involved; 22 % of them are involved in more than one project.
• The catalogue contains 172 multinational projects (37 % from total) aggregating to €1350 million (43 % from total).