Recent developments in the Electric Vehicles (EV) technologies have made great strides to offer new modes of smart green urban mobility, where EVs are used as the main transportation mode replacing the conventional diesel and petrol powered vehicles. EVs are expected to play a key role in achieving ambitious targets of lowering greenhouse emission in the transportation sector. Given the EV penetration rates and future forecasts, it is essential to develop technologies that tackle charging management of EVs considering a holistic view of charging supply/delivery management for EVs, communication of EVs to the smart grid infrastructure system using 5G and beyond systems, smart grids and big data analytics for EVs optimise smart mobility and enhance the quality of experience for EV users. EVOLVE aims to exploit the scientific excellence and expertise of key academic and industrial players into a joint collaborative effort to design, develop and test various technologies that consider the holistic view of EV charging taking into account the view of technical and business stakeholders. EVOLVE will pursue innovation for advancing the technologies in EV charging ecosystem by orchestrating and managing the underlying networking and computational resources, design innovative algorithms using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning ML), developing communication protocols, prediction and optimising load in smart grids, developing software systems and user interfaces (UIs). EVOLVE aims to transcend analytical models and simulation-based validation and aims to deliver five proof-of-concept (PoC) demonstrations. EVOLVE project will provide a platform to foster a close collaboration between academia and industry partners providing each with a unique experience to create new knowledge, share know-how and skills development.

The ebalance+ project applies to the ‘Flexibility and retail market options for the distribution grid’ by addressing flexibility solutions, smart-grids technologies to increase the distribution grid resilience and defining and testing market mechanisms and tools incentivising the energy flexibility. In this context, the ebalance+ project aims to increase energy flexibility of distribution grids, predict available flexibility, increase distribution grid resilience and design and test new ancillary models to promote new markets based on energy flexibility. These objectives allow unlocking the energy flexibility market in distribution grids to support energy prosumers and electric operators. The ebalance+ proposal is an ICT platform that assure the integration and interoperability at any electricity domain, providing an effective market framework where electric operators and stakeholders benefit with new business models. The system is composed of units that implements algorithms to forecast and manage the available flexibility to incentivise demand response programmes and increase the distribution grid capacity to avoid congestions and advise optimization strategies. Besides, it allows integrating the flexibility solutions (developed and tested in the project): electric storage, V2G systems, SiC power inverters, power to heat, control of CHP and management of building devices with IoT-based systems. Smart-gird automation and control solutions will be integrated to enhance the grid observability and use the available flexibility to increase the resilience under critical events. The consortium is composed of 15 entities from 8 EU countries, which the participation of research centres, SME and industry. The solutions are tested in 4 real-life pilots (Spain, Italy, France and Denmark) with specific scopes and objectives. In addition, and in-Lab demo is developed to test critical use cases. Innovative market models regarding flexibility market for DSO-TSO will be simulated