COPPER
Ghent University is a partner in the Interreg North Sea-funded initiative COPPER - Cities for Open and Participative Planning for Electricity grid Resilience
To prepare Europe’s local authorities to coordinate local energy systems, Ghent University has joined a European-wide alliance of frontrunner municipalities, businesses, research organizations and DSO representatives to test Europe’s first wave of Local Energy Action Plans (LEAPs).
Funded by the Interreg North Sea program, the COPPER initiative is the first Europe-wide collaboration to demonstrate LEAPs, a bundle of techniques and activities that will enable local authorities to drive locally-powered cities.
From 2023 - 2027, COPPER will:
• Deliver six first-of-a-kind pilots for local authority-led energy planning, from logistic parks to electric vehicle (EV) fleets to entire neighbourhoods.
• Explore ways that Distribution System Operators (DSOs) and local authorities can work together to build a local energy system of storage and flexibility technologies, policies, market incentives and collaborations to help locally-powered cities thrive.
• Build data models and other tools to boost local authority’s capacity to understand and steer their local energy system
Ghent University’s role
As part of the project, Ghent University will research, develop and test scalable energy management solutions in all-electric residential districts in Mariakerke (Ghent). Ghent University will cooperate with DSO Fluvius. Together they will improve grid stability in a residential district of Antwerp by balancing energy flows through coupling the electricity grid and the heat grid.
Learn more
Learn more about COPPER here, and follow us on LinkedIn to stay informed about the COPPER project. Please address questions to contact@coppercities.eu.
COPPER is an Interreg North Sea project co-funded by the European Union.
Project start: October 2023
Project end: October 2027
