Alstom Grid and the teams of the French state-owned research entity CEA - INES (Institut national de l’énergie solaire) announce the creation of a joint Research and Development Centre in Chambery (France). This joint laboratory will focus on developing advanced energy storage solutions and integrating renewable energy farms into smart transmission and distribution grids.

This laboratory will be located in INES’ Chambery campus. It will directly benefit from its core expertise in storage and solar applications as well as its existing testing capability across various ranges of solar and storage technologies. Alstom Grid, Alstom’s sector dedicated to power transmission, brings its expertise in power electronics, power conversion and Smart Grid control room integration. This partnership has been put in place to develop early breakthrough innovation by expanding services and solutions to accelerate the deployment of embedded storage into Smart Grid systems and facilitating further introduction of renewable beyond the European target of 20% of the energy mix by 2020. The teams will also further investigate the potential use of direct current (DC) applications into smart cities projects.

“With the creation of this R&D centre, Alstom Grid confirms its commitment to accelerating research for large-scale energy storage solutions.” declared Patrick Plas, Senior Vice-President, Grid Power and Automation at Alstom Grid. “Already at the forefront of Smart Grid innovation, this partnership will allow us to develop and test new technologies and build CO2 free electrical grids. This laboratory is complementary to the “IEED(1) Supergrid” which is to be created in Villeurbanne”.

This new laboratory is a natural expansion of the relationship established in the past three years with INES through key Smart Grid demonstration projects such as Reflexe in Nice and Greenlys in Rhône-Alpes (France).

“This partnership combines our recognised expertise around Solar and Storage with Alstom Grid’s research and development programs as well as our joint first returns of experience from current demonstrator projects around the world. Collaborating together on sustainable technology research will be a major step for our two organizations,” said Jean Therme, director of CEA Technological Research.

(1)Institut d’Excellence en matière d’Energies Décarbonées