IN Brief:
- EDP is seeking technologies covering network flexibility, monitoring, delivery, and resilience.
- Selected applicants will receive funded pilots and access to operational assets and data.
- Applications remain open until 23 August, followed by pitches and a Lisbon bootcamp.
EDP has opened applications for the Future Grids track of the tenth edition of its Energy Starter innovation programme.
The utility is seeking technologies that can increase network capacity and flexibility, improve monitoring and operational control, accelerate infrastructure construction and connection, and strengthen resilience to extreme weather and other system disturbances.
Applications remain open until 23 August, after which proposals will move through evaluation and online pitching before selected teams attend a bootcamp in Lisbon. Technologies taken forward can receive fully funded pilots and access to EDP’s operational assets, data, technical specialists, and business units.
Open to companies working across EDP’s markets in Europe, North America, South America, and Asia-Pacific, the programme sits alongside Energy Starter tracks covering renewable generation and client energy solutions. Technologies can therefore be assessed across generation, networks, and end-use applications rather than within a single operating area.
Energy Starter was launched in 2016. EDP records more than 200 pilot projects, 45 subsequent commercial deployments, and 30 venture-capital investments across its innovation activity since then, with approximately €140 million of identified business opportunities generated through the wider programme.
The Future Grids scope spans several levels of network constraint. Some areas require physical reinforcement, while others can release additional capacity through better forecasting, dynamic ratings, flexible connections, automated voltage control, or coordinated dispatch of distributed generation, storage, and demand.
Monitoring carries equal weight because network operators need dependable measurements from substations, feeders, distributed assets, and customer connections. Large volumes of data are useful only when they can be validated, combined, and converted into operational decisions, while communications failure, incompatible formats, poor time synchronisation, and incomplete asset records can weaken otherwise capable control platforms.
From pilot deployment to network operation
Innovation programmes give smaller technology companies access to live utility environments that would otherwise be difficult to enter. Laboratory demonstrations can establish technical potential, but they cannot fully reproduce legacy equipment, constrained communications, maintenance practices, cyber-security controls, regulatory obligations, and the operating pressures of an active network.
Real assets and operational data allow selected companies to prove integration rather than isolated product performance. A forecasting algorithm may perform well against a historical dataset, for example, but a network operator also needs to know how it handles missing data, unusual weather, topology changes, sensor drift, and delayed communications.
Transitioning from pilot to commercial deployment remains difficult because utility systems are expected to operate for years across several technology generations. Procurement must account for software support, cyber updates, data ownership, interoperability, vendor continuity, user training, audit trails, and the ability to recover from failed upgrades.
Solutions controlling physical assets face additional requirements. Automated switching, voltage control, storage dispatch, and flexible connection management must remain within defined safety and operating limits, with clear authority, fail-safe behaviour, and coordination with existing protection and supervisory systems.
Deployment of a common operating platform across a 350MW Dutch renewable portfolio has already shown how monitoring, market activity, and asset control can be consolidated within one workspace. Distribution utilities face a related task at greater scale, with more diverse equipment and stricter obligations around continuity and security.
Extreme-weather resilience adds another layer. Predictive maintenance, vegetation monitoring, flood assessment, fault location, mobile substations, automated restoration, and local flexibility can all reduce outage duration, but each tool must fit established emergency procedures and field operations.
Digital systems cannot replace conductors, transformers, switchgear, or substations where additional physical capacity is required. They can, however, improve use of existing assets, identify emerging constraints earlier, and direct reinforcement towards the parts of the network where it produces the greatest benefit.
Companies can submit proposals through the Energy Starter application platform. Technologies selected in Lisbon will still need to demonstrate repeatable performance beyond a single trial, but the programme provides a defined route from technical proposition to utility-scale evidence.
