Internet of Energy – Education and Qualification Erasmus Project

Project Title

Internet of Energy – Education and Qualification

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

According to the International Energy Agency, the electricity demand globally is expected to increase more than two-thirds by the year 2035. Such high increase in the electricity demand will put an unsustainable burden on the current outdated power infrastructure. Intelligent systems, distributed power sources and smart grids are considered as key elements of next future electric systems. All these devices, interconnected through the web and empowered through its instruments, realize the “Internet of Energy” (IoE).
Internet of Energy is one of the transformations that the Internet of Things revolution is bringing into technology industry. Interoperability between smart energy systems, realized through the web, allows the automatic optimization of consumption, the increased efficiency of the networks and their intelligent management.
This sector has an enormous market potential, but also the need of qualified professionals. The need to facilitate the diffusion of IoE technology at European level and the need of professionals in the sectors are the main reason why the IoE – EQ project has been proposed an submitted. In line with the European policies and fostering the DSM pillars, the project pursues the main objective listed below:
– qualifying new professionals able to support the digital transformation of the European companies, exploiting to the advantages offered by the IoE technology.
This general objective is reached by pursuing the specific objectives of:
– raising awareness among European Small and Medium Enterprises of the IoE technologies and applications and of the potential benefits for their competitiveness and economic growth;
– creating VET qualifications for professionals inside European Companies, enhancing their digital competences and training them to introduce and manage IoE technologies and applications.
In order to realize these objectives, the IoE-EQ partnership has been set-up. It involves 9 partners coming from 6 different countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain).
The geographical coverage and complementary competences offered by the partnership ensure a transnational approach. This is essential to face such an educational challenge at European level and to deal with a technology, whose impact goes much further the national boundaries.
The target groups are represented by professionals working in the Europeans SMEs, including IoE developers, researchers and students. This has allowed creating digital competences both for adopting IoE technologies and for realizing new services and applications. As a final result, this has not only fostered the digital transformation of the European SMEs, but has also encouraged the creation of new companies and IoE related businesses.
The project has started with an assessment of the training needs and of the labour market at European level, with reference to the IoE sector, stating the existing and ideal skills to be acquired. This preliminary study has been considered as the basis for designing VET qualifications, designed according to the Lifelong Learning instruments (EQF, EQVET and EQAVET) and the recent e-Competence Framework 3.0. A tailor-made learning process has followed the initial design phase. VET courses have been designed in order to provide the Learning Outcomes identified in the qualifications and didactic materials have been produced in several languages. All the didactic materials, realized as Open Educational Resources, has been delivered at distance. Then, a set of webinars have been realized by the partnership, gathering the views of experts in the sector, companies and policy makers. They have a double aim: to start involving students and to arise interest and to enrich the VET courses and the didactic material in general with real applications of IoE in different contexts. In order to allow the student to acquire also practical competences, highly innovative didactic demonstrators on IoE have been developed. The instruments, working as remote or virtual laboratories, have allowed the students to make practical experiences with IoE technologies, complementary to the ones acquired in the distance learning courses. Finally, all the experience gained have lead to the production of a handbook with examples and best practices about the adoption of IoE technologies.
The project has directly impacted on European companies, in terms of staff members trained and qualified to use IoE technologies and applications, on the professionals improving their skills and their employability, on the European Universities and VET providers, in terms of enhanced didactic offer in the IoE sector. The IoE -EQ qualifications, designed using the ECVET and e-CF instruments, have allowed the transnational recognition of the acquired competences and have enhanced the employability of the qualified users at European level. The project long terms benefits will be to speed up and increase the use of IoE across all economic sectors, fostering the European economy grow thanks to the digitalization transformation of the corporate sector.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 449561 Eur

Project Coordinator

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE & Country: IT

Project Partners

• FACHHOCHSCHULE DES MITTELSTANDES (FHM) GMBH – UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCE –
• VIESOJI ISTAIGA KAUNO MOKSLO IR TECHNOLOGIJU PARKAS
• ASSOCIACAO PARQUE DE CIENCIA E TECNOLOGIA DE ALMADA/SETUBAL-MADAN PARQUE
• Cedel – cooperativa sociale educativa ELIS
• INSTITUTE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT
• UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE EDUCACION A DISTANCIA
• ECOSISTEMAS VIRTUALES Y MODULARES SL