Brussels (Belgium), 27 January 2012

Institutional representatives from the European energy sector will attend the conference organised by the National Renewable Energy Centre (CENER) in Brussels today, where the characteristics and peculiarities of the Microgrid that CENER has recently launched and that is designed for industrial application, will be presented.

This Microgrid is managed by the Renewable Energy Grid Integration Department of CENER and is used as a test bench for new equipment, generation systems, energy storage, as well as control and protection strategies for microgrids.

The main objectives pursued are:

• Manage the power generated at any given moment so that the energy supply to the assigned loads is always guaranteed.
• Ensure that the power consumed by the loads comes, whenever possible, from renewable sources, thus fostering the energy independence of the LEA.
• Protect existing installations from faults originating both from the electrical grid and from the microgrid.
• Be able to send the energy surpluses produced to the electrical grid, so that the microgrid does not operate as an isolated element of the distribution grid but as an active part of it.

This energy facility has received financing from the European Regional Development Funds of the European Commission and from the Government of Navarra.

The conference is going to be held at the offices of the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI) of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and it will start at 9 am with the intervention of the Director General of CENER, Jose Javier Armendariz. Manuel Sanchez Jimenez (Policy Officer of DG Energy-European Commission), Maud Skäringer (DG REGIO-European Commission), Monica Aguado (Director of the Renewable Energy Grid Integration Department-CENER), Paula Mandatova (Eurelectric) and Ignacio Marti (R&D Director-CENER) are also scheduled to intervene.