The EU-fund EcoGrid project will run a pilot real-time market place for distributed energy resources on the Danish island of Bornholm by asking 2,000 electricity customers to reduce their power consumption when the wind is either too weak or too strong for the wind turbines on the island to work. The project seeks to reduce the consumers electricity grid.

EcoGrid (A Prototype for European Smart Grids), a project which brings together 16 project partners from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland, is funded with €12.7 million under the 'Energy' Theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), has foreseen to test the Smart Grids system.

In particular, the researchers will ask 2,000 electricity customers to reduce their power consumption when the wind is either too weak or too strong for the wind turbines on the island to work. In return they will be able to reduce their electricity bill with the help of an intelligent power system known as a 'Smart Grid'.

According to the project partners, Smart Grid works in an automated manner and disconnects an agreed proportion of each customer's consumption when electricity prices are high. The same system allows customers to raise their consumption when prices are low. Thus, in the system to be demonstrated on Bornholm it is the consumers who will solve the problem, by cutting back some of their electricity consumption for short periods. They added that this is far cheaper than giving them reserve power, and is also more environmentally friendly. And because it is cheaper, it will raise the limits of how much solar and wind power an electricity grid can actually rely on.