BRIDGE

BRIDGE is a European Commission initiative which unites Horizon 2020 Smart Grid, Energy Storage, Islands, and Digitalisation Projects to create a structured view of cross-cutting issues which are encountered in the demonstration projects and may constitute an obstacle to innovation. The BRIDGE process fosters continuous knowledge sharing amongst projects thus allowing them to deliver conclusions and recommendations about the future exploitation of the project results, with a single voice.

Challenges
European industry has been developing technologies for the development of Smart Grid technologies that are ready to be used at a large scale. However, to avoid repetition of investment and duplication of technologies in similar areas as well as to address the main technical, economic and social challenges that represent an obstacle to the deployment of innovative solutions, it is important the cross-border knowledge sharing is fostered as much as possible.

Solution
BRIDGE represents a cooperation group involving 90 projects (58 ongoing) in the areas of Smart Grid, Energy Storage, Islands, and Digitalisation originally funded under the Horizon 2020 program over the last 6 years (2014-2020) and is now incorporated under an official Commission service. BRIDGE aims at fostering the exchange of information, experience, knowledge, and best practices among its members. To do this in an optimal way, representatives from the different projects are structured in 4 different Working Groups: Regulation, Data Management, Consumer and Citizen Engagement and Business Models.

Result
Through the multiple Reports developed by the different BRIDGE working groups and task forces every year, the initiative fosters continuous knowledge sharing amongst projects by gathering coordinated and coherent recommendations to assist policy makers in view of removing barriers to innovation deployment. Today, projects involved in the BRIDGE Initiative gather over 1,000 organisations from 40 countries. The 2021 BRIDGE brochure provides a rich description on a broad range of technologies and services addressed by the projects involved in the initiative. In it, you will find a factsheet for each funded project, detailing the context, scope and impact, information on consortium partners, the geographical coverage, timeframe and funding received.