Alessandra Cuneo, MUSE GRIDS Coordinator from RINA Consulting provides an overview of what has happened within the project in the last months.

How did the recent Covid-19 crisis impact the overall work of MUSE GRIDS?

Even if the current COVID-19 outbreak has had a big impact in Europe, MUSE GRIDS project has not been affected consistently. The Consortium continued to work on MUSE GRIDS activities, even if in a smooth way, thank to online meetings and remote collaboration. The main impact was on the demonstration activities at Osimo and Oud-Heverlee demo site. Demonstrations have suffered from partners not being able to visit them and site works at end-users premises for the flexibility assets integration have been cancelled and postponed. The inability to go on demosites and meet customers have also delayed the customer engagement activities. In the meanwhile, the development of the control tool continues towards validation in the La Plana site.

How did partners manage the adversities of the crisis?

During the lockdown, MUSE GRIDS partners have had the capability to organise themselves and react to the new way of work. Some activities, mainly related to the demonstration phase, have been rescheduled, while teams try to advance the ones that were possible to perform remotely, such as anticipating the (huge) report writing. A plan for contingency time windows has been defined with an agile approach. A quick change of dissemination mindset has been applied presenting MUSE GRIDS results via online workshops/webinars and, when possible, end-users engagement has been performed online via surveys and phone interviews. In general, the team learned to adopt flexibility into its work plan towards the achievement of project objectives. However, the virtual meetings do not substitute the traditional ones and we hope to physically meet each other (and you) very soon!