The Association of European Distributed Energy Resources Laboratories (DERlab) has admitted four new members to its organization in the form of the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, the Interdisciplinary Center for Reliability, Security and Trust at the University of Luxembourg, K.U. Leuven for the new knowledge institute Energy Ville and Sandia National Laboratories from the U.S.
Traditionally, DERlab was a group of European DER laboratories from EU member states. Sandia is the first non-European member institute to be admitted to the association. “It is planned to further intensify the international co-operation under the umbrella of ISGAN, the International Smart Grid Action Network that was recently founded. DERlab is ready to support and to join a new international research facility network that is under preparation at the IEA”, announced Dr. Philipp Strauss, former spokesperson of DERlab’s board. Sandia’s research in emerging energy technologies for new and existing electricity infrastructures is anticipated to help support DERlab’s mission.
Along with Sandia, each new member brings different expertise to DERlab. The VTT Technical Research Center offers multifunctional environments for researching technical solutions and products for distributed energy systems, while the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Center is known for their background in field reliability and security of information and communication technology. Finally, Belgium’s K.U. Leuven is credited with the co-founding of Energy Ville, which focuses on research in green energy and energy technology.
“DERlab aims to cluster the best European DER laboratories from each EU member state and is now starting to involve institutes from other continents as well”, continued Strauss. “The new members will bring all their valuable technical expertise to the network”.
In addition to announcing the integration of four new members, DERlab elected a new spokesperson of the board. Philipp Strauss stepped down from the position and ushered in Roland Bründlinger from AIT as the new spokesperson of the board. Bründlinger is focusing on the further development of DERlab so that it can better support the transition of power systems to the future “Smart Grid” format.