The Islander Project

Welcome to Islander, Exploring our renewable Energy Future

There will be seismic shifts in how we distribute electricity in the future and Ayesa is playing a major part in the innovation of new technologies in partnership with the EU as part of the ISLANDER project.

The ISLANDER project is providing solutions to the challenges of the intermittent nature of renewable sources of power, using artificial intelligence and connected technology to manage the output peaks and troughs. We know that consumption demand peaks cannot always be met by solar and wind energy and often expensive grid electricity will need to be bought in to supplement the supply. Then vice-versa, when too much energy is generated, it has to be exported, often under unfavourable conditions.  AYESA is leading the project team of over 7 countries and 11 companies to develop and test these new technologies on the island of Borkum to help accelerate the decarbonisation of energy systems across the 2400 islands of the EU.  ISLANDER is a 8 million euros EU-Funded project that will run until 2024.

This project supersedes the work of the EU's H2020 NETfficient project, which ran from 2015 to research potential solutions for renewable energy storage.  Islands within the EU provide the ideal location to test new technologies on a meaningful scale, that will form the basis of the smart green energy systems of the future. There are circa 2,400 inhabited islands, many of which are popular tourist spots, and home to 16 million people or 4% of the European population. Typically, most islands rely on water and energy imports and use fossil fuels for transportation and heat. 

The pilot scheme as part of ISLANDER includes an electric charging network, distributed renewable energy, small-scale storage (RESS) systems and complementary short-to-seasonal, large-scale electricity storage and seawater district heating, coupled with heat storage to capitalise on the North Seawater as a heating and cooling source.

Introducing GridPilot

One of the key aspects of the NETfficient programme is an Ayesa developed platform, Gridpilot which uses artificial intelligence to manage renewable energy generation and storage across various producers and assets, automatically deciding with perfect timing, when energy sources should be consumed or sold.

According to Matteo Leghissa, Data Scientist, Ayesa - "Artificial Intelligence plays a critical role in the forecasting and scaling tools for infrastructure and energy storage in our application.

The Ayesa system uses a whole-asset approach, ensuring every asset as part of the infrastructure works is connected and works in synergy. The system combines machine learning algorithms with mathematical modelling to forecast energy prices, energy generation, storage and consumption. It also applies optimisation algorithms such as stochastic and distributed technologies."

"The acquisition, storage and management of high-quality data and immediate responses are extremely important to the efficient working of this system. The Gridpilot technology offers a set of technologies to improve the scalability and the integrity of artificial intelligence algorithms. The team is also working on a real-time interface to improve end-user awareness" - Alejandro Chito, Responsible for GridPilot

"The Islander project goes a step further by also integrating electromobility and other more advanced services such as demand-side management. Electromobility is crucial for the decarbonisation of the island, given that more than 50% of CO2 emissions are due to transport," commented Alicia Arce, Chief Innovation Officer at Ayesa

"The Islander project will install bi-directional charging stations, with both charging and discharging points. These electric vehicle charging points will be installed across different locations but integrated with the infrastructure for public use. In this way, electric vehicles will act as mobile energy warehouses as storage and energy-creating units, that can be managed with the rest of the assets to offer energy to both the end user and to the grid, as required" said Maria Dolores Jimenez Sanchez, SMART solutions Engineer at Ayesa