A study to monitor air quality in the municipalities of la Llagosta, Mollet del Vallès and Santa Perpètua de Mogoda
September 15, 2025
TRIFFID: Autonomous Robotic Aid For Increasing First Responders Efficiency
September 22, 202518/09/2025
The Centre of Technological Innovation in Power Electronics and Drives (CITCEA) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) is leading a European project that redesigns the current energy system to stabilise the power grid in the face of high renewable energy penetration. The proposed solutions involve using the loads that consume energy to help balance the grid.
With the increase in solar and wind energy, which have variable and less controllable output, maintaining power grid stability is an increasingly complex challenge in the current context of the energy transition. Traditional solutions, such as batteries or the temporary reduction of renewable generation, are costly and not always efficient.
The European project ‘Grid Forming Loads to provide maximum flexibility and enable future power systems with very high renewable generation penetration’ (GridForLoads) proposes an innovative alternative to address the new power grid challenges arising from the penetration of renewable energy: grid-forming loads.
The project aims to leverage energy-consuming devices on the grid, such as electric vehicle chargers or pump drives, which, thanks to advanced control, can actively help maintain grid balance. This allows renewables to operate at full capacity, without the need to reduce generation or compromise system reliability.
The grid-forming loads developed within the project allow the responsibility for forming and stabilising the grid to shift from generators to consumers, reversing the traditional operation of the power grid, where generators have historically been responsible for stabilising the network. The research team will test this technology through experimental tests and system-scale simulations.
Impact
GridForLoads will lay the foundations for a more reliable, efficient power system, prepared for a future based on clean energy.
UPC has filed the patent 'Method and system for controlling a voltage source converter as a grid forming load' and is promoting the development of the concept and its commercial exploitation and application.
Partners, budget and funding
Led by CITCEA-UPC, the project is funded with €2.5 million under the Horizon Europe programme (HORIZON-101192350-GridForLoads) and involves six European research centres and companies. In addition to CITCEA-UPC, the project team includes the collaboration with the UPC’s Hydrogen Specific Research Centre (CER-H2). GridForLoads has a duration of 42 months (January 2025 – June 2028).
Related Projects
- The Image and Video Processing Group (GPI), part of the IDEAI-UPC research group, and the Digital Culture and Creative Technologies Research Group (DiCode) from the Image Processing and Multimedia Technology Center (CITM) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech (UPC), have co-organised the AI and Music Festival (S+T+ARTS) together with Sónar+D and Betevé, to explore the creative use of artificial intelligence in music.
- The Visualisation, Virtual Reality and Graphic Interaction Research Group (ViRVIG) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) has participated in the XR4ED project, an initiative that connects the educational technology (EdTech) and Extended Reality (XR) sectors, with the aim of transforming learning and training across Europe.
- The inLab FIB at the UPC has collaborated with Lizcore® for the development of a proof of concept based on artificial intelligence to improve safety in climbing with autobelay devices. The system allows the automatic and accurate detection of risk situations before starting a route.
- Researchers from the Centre for Image and Multimedia Technology of the UPC (CITM) and from the DiCode research group (Digital Culture and Creative Technologies Research Group) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech (UPC) have worked on the project The Eyes of History, an initiative of the Catalan Agency for Cultural Heritage that offers an immersive view of Catalan cultural heritage. It is especially aimed at the first and second cycles of secondary education and was created to bring heritage into the classroom. Its goal is to bring the history and monuments of Catalonia closer in a vivid and innovative way, using tools such as virtual reality and new museographic narratives.
