In the morning of October 4, 2017, Giuseppe had just put down his RED WoLF idea on a poster and hung it, among many others, at the Interreg NWE "Project Idea Lab" in The Hague. A postal envelope was attached at the bottom of every poster, where interested attendees (the list can still be found here!) could drop their business cards.
A journey of many years followed, consisting in finding (and keep adding) the right partners for RED WoLF. Most of this work occurred in the initial few months, with Giuseppe contacting potentially interested organizations, following first the business cards in the envelope, then asking for suggestions to the powerful Interreg NWE network of National Contact Points, and discussing with colleagues who might know somebody interested. In general, by word of mouth, a process that sped up exponentially thanks to the partners that had joined in the meanwhile.
In the afternoon of October 4, 2017, a round table was also associated to every poster's author, where interested attendees could sit and discuss. The very first one to sit at the RED WoLF table was Paul Jacobs from Volta! A representative of Greater Manchester also joined, who few days later introduced nascent RED WoLF to Dave Catherall from Oldham Council, who then proposed First Choice Homes Oldham to the growing partnership. Gradually, the consortium expanded to today's number of 16 active partner organizations, after the Capitalization award (2021) and a number of updates of the proposal. Morbihan Habitat from Bretagne, France, is the organization that joined most recently. The work of Stevie Donnely, IT Sligo (now merged into the Atlantic Technological University), who was able to put together the Irish Pilots and partner organizations virtually by himself, must be mentioned.
6 years ago was not straightforward to convince a housing association to test our system, algorithms and controls (yet to be designed, let alone built...) in inhabited houses, where real people live and pay the rent. Nothing off-the-shelf... Until before, say, the global pandemic, concepts like electrification of heating, electricity's CO2 index and dynamic tariffs were seen as fringe topics by many, not to speak about a (then) hypothetical system manufactured around such concepts.
The Poster hung in the Hague can be found below. A couple of elements, e.g. seasonal storage, could not be included in RED WoLF, due to the necessity of writing a focused proposal, and will be addressed in the future by our partnership.
