During the 3rd week of January 2023 we visited Madeira, our Portuguese lighthouse, to hold our general assembly meeting and to visit the use case demonstration sites. This was the second lighthouse visit which followed that of Bornholm held last June.

The first day of the meeting started with a welcome speech by Isabel Rodrigues, the Regional Director of Economy and Land Transport, by Roland Bachmeier, from the board of ACIF-CCIM and by Diogo Vasconcelos, on behalf of EEM’s Board of Directors. Subsequently the work package leaders presented the progress of the past months and the upcoming activities to the end of the project (November 2023). These include, completion of the use-case activities and delivery of final results, visit to the Croatian lighthouse, Unije, dissemination events, training and demonstration activities of the Investment Planning Tool (IPT) by Artelys and the final event. Additionally, the partners watched for the first time a 10 min film produced by Croatian partners presenting the contributions of INSULAE to the sustainable development of Unije. The film will soon be shared in INSULAE communication channels. Stay tuned!

Diogo Vasconcelos and Aires Henriques from EEM presented the company’s innovative projects that can support EU Islands’ Energy Transition including hybrid storage systems and batteries.

Partner RINA hosted the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) & Exploitation Review Workshop where the IPR strategy and the protection of the Key Exploitable Results (KERs) where discussed. The day was completed with a visit to the EV chargers installed in the center of Funchal for the purpose of INSULAE project.

In the second day we visited:

  • the 15 MW/16,4 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) installed next to the EEM thermal power plant (Central Térmica da Vitória);
  • The Socorridos Hydroelectric Power Plant, a multi-purpose plant supplying water to Funchal and Câmara de Lobos, regulating irrigation flows and producing electricity. It accommodates 3 groups of 8MW each, totaling 24 MW of installed capacity and a 11,25 MW/30 MWh hydro pump storage system;
  • The Loiral I wind farm comprised by 6 turbines of 850 kW each.

Unfortunately, the weather conditions, did not allow us to visit the Paul da Serra solar plant as planned.

In the last day, the lighthouse partners discussed about the final set of KPIs to be considered. The rest of the day was dedicated to the IPT. Two parallel sessions took place, one advanced IPT demonstration for the lighthouse and replication island partners and one simple demonstration of the IPT capabilities for the partners that had no previous experience with the tool. This session was very helpful for the preparation of the upcoming training and demonstration activities of the IPT.

The INSULAE project coordinator Leon Nielsen (CIRCE) and the other partners want to thank our colleagues from ACIF and EEM for hosting these project meetings and visits. We are looking forward to our next project meeting in the Croatian lighthouse this summer!