Corporate

This section gives voice to companies and organisations that have worked with INESC TEC in various projects and activities. A good relationship and good examples are fundamental ingredients for science and technology to serve society with equal amounts of enthusiasm and professionalism.

nuno silva, director, technology management, efacec

• "The collaboration has been very successful and sustainable. As a long-term relationship, this is a good example of technology transfer management between industrial partners and institutions of the National Scientific and Technological System, whose purpose is to complement the technological and scientific areas of both sides, always focusing on differentiating and adding value to the application and assimilation of joint developments."

History of the relationship between the company and INESC TEC

Efacec has a long-term relationship with INESC TEC that has actively contributed towards the development of technology and value creation. For over 25 years, we have had a formal cooperation from which several examples of success in technology transfer have been born, all with an application on Efacec’s clients. INESC TEC is an integral part of our partnership ecosystem focused on technological development in the areas of energy, communications, engineering and industrial management. Therefore, over time it has provided complementary inputs to the fields of knowledge in which we operate. That emphasizes the distinctive and competitive character of our solutions.

The successful examples are numerous, so only some of the projects are presented here:

Project SIGORDE and SCADA/DMS – promoted by the Centre for Power and Energy Systems, these initiatives aim at developing energy applications and optimization algorithms for implementation in the distribution and transmission network management systems. These developments are an integral part of our portfolio of management systems and have over a dozen references.

Inovgrid and InovCity – internationally recognised reference projects with the purpose of designing, specifying, developing, implementing and demonstrating the concept of smart grid within a Portuguese context. The result is an extensive architecture in which the relationship between Efacec and INESC TEC translates into several levels, several solutions and with numerous demonstrations.

SCADA BT and ADMS4LV – projects supported by the systems of incentives to innovation defined by the Portuguese Government (QREN and Portugal 2020) that resulted in the development of the Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS), which has high, medium and low voltage integration, includes the concept of smart grids and electric vehicles, and has a strong differentiating character. 

REIVE – a project that promoted the establishment of a laboratory of Smart Grids with Electric Vehicles and that seeks the progressive and technical integration of microgeneration systems and electric vehicles with the electrical network, making sure that its exploration is efficient. The role of Efacec allowed implementing several high capacity solutions in order to control and configure a system that replicates a low voltage electrical network. With that in mind, distributed resources of renewable origins and electric vehicles were installed.

NextSTEP – supported by Portugal 2020 in a consortium led by Efacec Energia, the project NEXTSTEP - NEXT distribution SubsTation improvEd Platform aims to develop an innovative Transformer Station. The knowledge and the scientific skills that INESC TEC brings to the project enable the co-creation and co-development of new scientific knowledge for subsequent application, as seen in the low voltage distribution network in Portugal.

SuSTAINABLE – SUSTAINABLE (Smart distribution System operaTion for mAximizing the Integration of renewable generation) is a European project of the 7^th framework programme. It was developed by a consortium of eight partners and its goal was to develop advanced functionalities and algorithms to support the operation of the distribution network in order to maximize the integration of renewable energy in a secure and sustainable way. Efacec and INESC TEC collaborated in the joint development of several tools for medium and low voltage networks. 

Business area

Energy

Title of the projects

SIGORDE
SCADA/DMS
Inovgrid
InovCity
EFA iCHARGE
SCADA BT
3PHASE
MT GRID
REIVE
ADMS4LV
NextSTEP
AnyPLACE
SuSTAINABLE

INESC TEC Centres with which the company collaborated

CPES – Centre for Power and Energy Systems
CTM – Centre for Telecommunications and Multimedia

Projects managers (INESC TEC)

João Peças Lopes, Luís Seca, Jorge Pereira, André Madureira, Joel Soares, Clara Gouveia, Manuel Ricardo, David Rua, Manuel Matos, Vladimiro Miranda

Statement about the projects

The results are very positive and can be seen in several applications of solutions that make the current Efacec portfolio. In the following projects, we mention the specific and direct developments that came out of the collaboration between Efacec and INESC TEC:

Project SIGORDE and SCADA/DMS – toolset of applications of energy and optimization algorithms integrated in the SCADA/DMS (ScateX+) product to manage distribution and electrical energy transmission networks. These developments include a topology processor, power flow (with optimization), reactive power voltage control, state estimation, short-circuit analysis, load forecast, contingency analysis, economic dispatch, and dispatcher training simulator, among others.

Inovgrid and InovCity – functional and technical specification of all the parts of the architecture that served as a basis for Efacec’s development of the DTC (GSmart – Distribution Transformer Controller) and specific functionalities for the SCADA/DMS system used by EDP.

SCADA BT and ADMS4LV – definition of the solution architecture and its functional specifications. Specific functionalities for the ADMS (Advanced Distribution Management System), essentially focused on the state estimation of networks with limited information about their topology.

REIVE - Laboratory of Smart Grids with Electric Vehicles, in which Efacec contributed significantly with the investment of financial resources, own solutions for the laboratory and specialised expertise for the installation and configuration.

NextSTEP – specification of requirements and functional solution architecture; co-development of algorithms for the transformer station controller, the regulation of voltage converters, the storage system, the control of the low voltage network and automatic reconfiguration.

SuSTAINABLE – distributed and multilevel state estimation tools (with hierarchical architecture) for incorporation in the automation systems of substations and in low voltage networks; distributed algorithmics (embedded in DTC) for integrated and optimised control of low voltage networks with dispersed generation, electric vehicles and power storage.

As shown by the several examples presented, the collaboration has been very successful and sustainable. As a long-term relationship, this is a good example of technology transfer management between industrial partners and institutions of the National Scientific and Technological System, whose purpose is to complement the technological and scientific areas of both sides, always focusing on differentiating and adding value to the application and assimilation of joint developments.

On the path towards excellency and facing the on-going transformation of the energy area, the Efacec-INESC TEC partnership will enable differentiating sustainable solutions. The need for increased system efficiency, resiliency and reliability, even when taking into consideration all the different assets (including renewable sources), imposes a multiplicity of technological solutions. Together with the new digital movements, Big/Smart Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, areas in which both institutions have already carried out work, the combination of skills will allow facing these challenges in a differentiating, competitive and client-focused way.