Equigy and EIB collaborate to map green potential of crowd balancing

Equigy, the European TSOs’ crowd balancing platform, has been granted Project Development Assistance by the European Investment Bank (EIB), under the prestigious Innovation Fund. Equigy plays a key role in accelerating the energy transition and integrating the energy system, and this assistance will help the platform further develop its vision.

The in-kind support will see Equigy work with the EIB to analyse the market potential of integrating distributed energy resources into the electricity system through the crowd balancing platform. It will assess the flexibility potential of distributed energy resources and their benefit to society. Equigy expects to be able to share the outcomes of this analysis with market parties in the first half of 2022.

“We’re thrilled to be granted this assistance,” says Ersilia Aloia, Equigy’s Chief Financial Officer. “This Innovation Fund support highlights the key role and potential of our highly innovative crowd balancing solution in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Highlighting Equigy’s value

In October last year, Equigy submitted a proposal to the Innovation Fund, seeking a grant to develop key functionalities that would boost growth and lower the barriers for TSOs and market parties to adopt the CBP across Europe, while reducing the risk for current shareholders.

Equigy was awarded Project Development Assistance, which will focus on a market assessment to establish the platform’s relevance by analysing; distributed energy resource feasibility, economic benefits for different stakeholders as well as Distributed Energy Resources and Aggregator business outlook

Equigy plays a key role in the acceleration of the energy transition and the integration of the energy system. With its European crowd balancing platform, it creates a trusted data exchange to allow aggregators to participate with smaller flexibility devices, such as home batteries and electric vehicles, in electricity balancing markets, turning consumers into prosumers.

Owned by five leading European transmission system operators, Equigy aims to set cross-industry standards throughout Europe, to support a future-proof, reliable and cost-effective power system that is independent of fossil fuel-based flexibility sources.

The Innovation Fund is a funding instrument supporting the vision for climate neutral Europe by 2050. It focuses on highly innovative technologies and big flagship projects with European value added that can bring on significant emission reductions. It sets out to share the risk with project promoters to help demonstrate the effectiveness of innovative first-of-a-kind projects.