STEPS in figures: improving the e-storage market in NWE

The STEPS Business Support Programme

The goal of the STEPS project is to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the North-West Europe region (NWE) to bring their product to the market and increase their competitiveness.

What support has been provided in 2021?

2021 has proved to be a fruitful year for STEPS. 40 vouchers from the first phase were awarded to SMEs, where the SME’s work together with knowledge partners from the consortium to enhance their product and optimize it for testing. According to Roman Alberti, one of the founders of the German startup Voltfang, the support has already led to valuable results: “The competent advice of the TU Darmstadt staff on the topics of safety concept, CE conformity, risk analysis, system limits, and the corresponding safety guidelines and standards provided us with the decisive input to achieve market readiness and certification of our product. In addition, the scientists of the University of Twente supported us when it came to the topic of electromagnetic compatibility.”

Following the knowledge partner support in the first phase,  SMEs in each STEPS region went to the second phase where they test and demonstrate their product at testbeds and with potential end users. Entrepreneurs Loquet (BE) and Zebra (NL) are joining forces to test an integrated battery system with solar parc Terranova Solar (BE), where Locquet implements battery storage and Zebra will test their energy balancing algorithms at a real test environment. The remaining vouchers for the second phase will be awarded this year.

Regional energy markets

Because energy markets differ from region to region in NWE, the laws, regulations, challenges, opportunities and funding possibilities of each region have been identified and reported. This provides useful information for SMEs looking to enter the market in their own country or in one of the NWE regions.

To improve matchmaking between SMEs, testbeds and partners in the field of energy storage in NWE, an interactive map has been developed. Filtering by organization type, region, market and technology type makes it easy to find the required information: Microsoft Power BI.

A market analysis investigating the energy storage market in NWE was also carried out. This included three digital roundtables, in which experts discussed the themes 'market readiness', 'enhancing circularity of Battery Energy Storage' and 'Medium Scale Front of the Meter Storage' in order to identify trends, opportunities and obstacles and to propose possible solutions. The results are part of the market analysis that will be published in January.

Getting to know each other

Due to corona, many meetings had took place digitally, but there were still some opportunities to meet each other. The members of the STEPS consortium met for the first time since the start of the project in 2019, in Brussels, where there was plenty of time to get to know each other, exchange ideas and talk about the content, challenges and unexploited opportunities of the project.

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