SMART is a Living Lab (LL) designed to act as a user-centric open innovation ecosystem, attached to the value potential of new markets. The facilities of University of Western Macedonia and distributed residential prosumers within the district of Central and Western Macedonia in Greece compose the real testing environment.
The aim of SMART LL is to rebalance the public action in a logic of considering the generality of citizens’ concern through the active participation of users. The different climate conditions (high altitude, seaside) and geographical particularities (lignite power stations, high RES penetration) of the established users allows a wide range of real-life testing including actors with little economic weight. The highly educated team of SMART LL, consisting of Professors, post-doc researchers, PhD candidates and engineers, constantly try to create strong ties between the academia and the local business infrastructure with special focus on Small Medium Enterprises. SMART LL is based on the pillars of research, education and industrial testing. Through the educational dimension, the students can have access to records and assets of actual users. The research interests include smart grids, ancillary services to grid operators, demand side management techniques, photovoltaics and energy storage systems operation optimization.
SMART is an established Living Lab (LL) since 2018. The beginning of SMART LL started in terms of MOST EU project in the fields of testing innovative solutions for different kind of prosumers, including residential ones.
By joining the ENoLL community, SMART LL broadened its international appeal for researchers, university students and smart technology manufacturers and made contacts with other LLs for exchanging experiences and practices from lessons learnt in practice. Since the research is one of the main pillars, SMART LL has established new cooperations for working together in new research proposals (Horizon2020, InterregMed, etc.).
The fields of interest of SMART LL belong to Energy and Environment Task Force and Living Labs as Regulatory Learning Tools Working Group. The already gained experience and data collected from the real prosumers in terms of the participated research projects can become a starting point for building a strong collaboration with other LL Members of ENoLL.
The SMART LL is hosted by University of Western Macedonia, however it also consists of a wide range of network, namely Municipality of Florina, Municipality of Servia, Hamsystems SME company, MSENSIS SME company and Innora SME company.
University of Western Macedonia (https://www.uowm.gr/en/, https://ece.uowm.gr/?lan=en): The University of Western Macedonia is located in the cities of Kozani and Florina. It was founded in 2003 and since 2015 it is a self-governing institution. The main campus is located in Kila, just 3 km away from Kozani city. The dormitories of the main campus are part of SMART LL, where photovoltaics (PV), battery energy storage systems (BESS), smart meters and smart plugs together with energy management systems are already installed.