GIFT is an innovative project that aims to decarbonise the energy mix of European islands. European islands have to abide by the law of their countries that push toward a greener energy mix to comply with the European and international agreements. GIFT is willing to develop innovative systems to allow islands to integrate vast amount of renewables. Through the development of multiple innovative solutions, such as a virtual power system, energy management systems for harbours, factories, homes, better prediction of supply and demand and visualisation of those date through a GIS platform, and innovative storage systems allowing synergy between electrical, heating and transportation networks, GIFT solution increases the penetration rate of renewable energy sources into the islands’ grid, reducing their needs for diesel generation and thus decreasing the greenhouse gases emissions directly related to it. During 4 years, the partners developed and demonstrated the solutions in two lighthouse islands, in Hinnøya, Norway’s largest island and the small island of Procida in Italy and study the replicability of the solution in a Greek and Italian islands at the minimum, respectively Evia and Favignana. As the final solution should be replicable, a complementary objective to the demonstration is the replication analysis on follower islands. The scope of this analysis is to highlight the benefits, but also to unveil limitations in the solution deployment, especially when the scale increases. Lessons learnt and recommendations conclude this analysis, the results of which are important not only for the specific islands’ stakeholder but also for the general public.
GIFT addressed the energy issues on the demonstration sites in a holistic way. High energy costs on the islands mostly depend on the undesirable situations on the grid, caused mostly by the volatile supply through the renewables. In order to achieve high level of RES penetration, the grid needs to become more dynamic. We deployed several solutions for monitoring the local grid that allowed us to make real time predictions on the operational states of the grid. We used this information to construct a bid for flexibility, which allowed the island to balance the grid in real time. The central part of the project is flexibility marketplace, which allows many different prosumers to participate in a uniform way. This generalization layer allows for construction of several different business cases for participating players. With unique approaches to storage, such as multi vector and virtual storage, we demonstrate a comprehensive integrated solution of different technologies, all working together in a coordinated manner.
