Establishment of an advanced framework FOR Transforming current EPES into a more resilient, reliable and secure system all over its value chain
Start Date: 01/09/2022
End Date: 31/08/2026
Website: https://efort-project.eu/
eFORT – More Resilient Power Grids for the Energy Transition
What happens when a fault isolates an entire valley from the national power grid? As we move toward a decentralised energy system increasingly powered by renewables, scenarios like this will become more frequent, and we need new solutions to manage them without leaving anyone in the dark.
This is the challenge at the heart of eFORT (Establishment of an advanced framework FOR Transforming current EPES into a more resilient, reliable and secure system all over its value chain), a project funded by the European Union with a €9 million budget, bringing together 23 partners from 9 European countries from September 2022 to August 2026.
The Objective
eFORT aims to improve the resilience and security of power grids in a rapidly changing context: a shift from the traditional centralised model to a distributed network, populated by renewable energy plants that are often small and spread across the territory. In particular, the project develops innovative control algorithms capable of keeping the system stable even in the event of load or generation losses, faults, cable cuts, congestion, comparing traditional approaches with those based on artificial intelligence.
LINKS’ Role
LINKS is the leader of the Work Package “Development of technologies for a more secured and robust grid”, which aims to develop technologies to make Electrical Power and Energy Systems (EPES) more secure, robust and protected against equipment failures, man-made hazards and extreme weather events.
The WP tackles diverse but converging challenges:
- dynamic risk assessment tools – both cyber and physical – for grid reliability and resilience;
- islanding operation schemes to ensure robust grid management and control when portions of the network are isolated;
- proactive intrusion detection systems and security information & event management tools;
- protection, control and automation of digital secure substations;
- advanced verification and traceability layers for the grid;
- AI-based algorithms for power stability in islanding mode;
- improving operators’ situational awareness, enabling them to make informed decisions when responding to disruptive events.
LINKS also actively contributes to the Italian pilot case in the Sarentino Valley, in South Tyrol, in collaboration with the local DSO EDYNA — which manages over 8,600 km of network and supplies 230,000 customers — and with the industrial partner SELTA-DP, responsible for the technological development of the demonstrator, under the overall coordination of CIRCE.
The challenge is concrete: enabling isolated portions of the grid to operate in “island” mode, automatically regulating active power and voltage, to prevent service interruptions.
The Sarentino Valley is an ideal testbed: the mountainous terrain hosts numerous hydroelectric plants (348 MW installed out of a total of 616 MW of MV and LV production) which, especially during the summer months, generate a power surplus with reversed flows from the medium-voltage to the high-voltage grid.
A perfect setting to test algorithms designed for the grid of the future.
A-Bot: A Conversational Assistant for Grid Operators
Among the activities developed by LINKS within the project is A-Bot, a conversational chatbot designed to 
support grid operators in their monitoring activities that allows users to query data on grid nodes and lines in natural language, monitor the status of the grid and receive alerts.
Currently a prototype connected to simulated data, it integrates with the intelligent platform developed by SIA and represents an early step toward the introduction of conversational AI into the operational toolkit of grid operators.
Blockchain and Traceability of Energy Exchanges
LINKS also contributes to the study of blockchain applications for the traceability of energy exchanges on the grid – a key building block for ensuring transparency and reliability in an increasingly distributed and peer-to-peer energy market.
Toward a More Secure European Grid
LINKS’ contribution to eFORT stems from the collaboration between two of its research areas – FCC – Future Cities & Communities and ADS – AI, Data & Space – bringing together expertise in energy systems, urban infrastructure and applied artificial intelligence. It’s a combination that reflects the very nature of the project: eFORT does not just develop technologies, it helps define what the European power grid of the coming decades should look like – more resilient against faults, capable of integrating growing shares of renewables, and ready to support the continent’s energy transition.
