Power and Energy Systems

About Centre

INESC TEC’s main actor in the energy field is the Centre for Power and Energy Systems (CPES), which falls within the Cluster Energy Systems. We at CPES are internationally recognised for our expertise in the integration of renewable energy in power systems, distributed generation, storage, smart grids and areas traditionally associated with the planning and operation of power systems. The high level of expertise developed has allowed our experts at CPES to take on key roles in important EU projects as part of the successive framework programmes that led to notable scientific and technical advances with considerable impact on industry. This has led to contracts for development and consultancy with companies manufacturing equipment and with generation, transmission and distribution companies, regulators, government agencies and investors in Europe, South America, the United States of America and Africa. At CPES, we address the following main research areas: Decision Making, Optimisation and Computational Intelligence, Forecasting, Static and Dynamic analysis of Energy Grids, Reliability, Power Electronics.

Centre Areas

Operação, gestão e automatização de redes

We conduct pioneering research to design and integrate advanced computational tools for network management systems across all voltage levels. Our efforts are directed towards the development of next-generation solutions for network automation, protection, control, and digitalisation, leveraging emerging technologies in the fields of AI, Digital Twins, edge computing, and optimisation. These solutions address challenges aimed at enhancing grid performance, facilitating the integration of renewable energy, optimising EV charging infrastructures, and improving both real-time and predictive operations. We have established strong collaborations with other research entities and with the industry, being a renowned partner for providing highly specialised consultancy services and licensing software tools.

Mercados de eletricidade e regulação

The Area of Electricity Markets and Regulation focuses on understanding the dynamics of current electricity markets and price formation to support industry stakeholders and new market participants in adapting their short- and long-term strategies to improve efficiency and competitiveness. It also involves rethinking existing market structures and designing innovative frameworks to promote greater market participation and unlock the flexibility of both central and distributed resources, while ensuring their financial sustainability. Developing market models is essential for addressing market challenges, testing new market structures, and enabling continuous adaptation to evolving contexts, including local and regional market integration, power system decentralisation, varying decision timeframes, emerging resources, and new products and system services.

Sistemas de energia multivetoriais

The Multi-Energy Networks area leads the development of integrated modelling, simulation and optimisation of electricity, gas, heating/cooling and mobility systems. Our work enables holistic planning and operation of multi-vector energy networks, supporting energy transition goals. We develop advanced decision-support tools, tailored optimisation algorithms and technical-economic models for power-to-gas, power-to-heat, storage and electric mobility. Our expertise empowers retailers/aggregators, network operators and energy systems’ planners to maximise value across energy and carbon markets, ensuring smarter and more sustainable infrastructures.

Gestão da energia do lado da procura

The Demand Side Energy Management (DSEM) area at INESC TEC advances the efficient use of energy on the consumer side, focusing on innovation from early research to near-market applications (TRL 7–8). It applies work across transportation, industry, and buildings, leveraging in-house tools for energy management and interoperability. Key activities include smart home management solutions, EV smart charging strategies and mobility, supporting energy-intensive industries through digital twins, renewable energy communities’ management tools, data spaces integration, developing building energy systems integrating demand response applications, for flexible distributed energy resources, e.g., batteries and smart appliances. Collaboration with European initiatives boosts international visibility, while digitalisation, behavioural change, and legislative compliance drive impact. DSEM’s mission is to shape a more sustainable, flexible, and consumer-responsive energy system.

Integração e armazenamento de fontes de energia renovável

The RES & storage integration area activities focus on the challenges of decarbonisation through the integration of renewable energy sources on isolated and interconnected power systems. This area explores the evaluation of RES & storage integration through: power system analyses in steady-state and dynamic stability, the development of advanced control strategies to mitigate the integration impact, the development of grid-code compliance analysis, and ultimately, on the development of managing algorithms applied to energy storage and hybrid systems.

Infraestruturas de software

The Software Fabric area fosters the collaboration between researchers from informatics, computer science, and power systems to industrialise and demonstrate cutting-edge software solutions. By integrating research insights and industry practices, it accelerates the transition from academic innovation to real-world applications - enabling advanced simulations, optimisations, and the development of scalable, industry-ready tools for modern energy challenges.

Flagship Projects

BioShoes4All

InterConnect

The underlying concept of InterConnect is the Semantic Interoperability, which is the ability that digital systems have to exchange data with unambiguous, shared and agreed meaning, a steppingstone for the implementation of the Digital Single Market and enablement of cross domain data spaces. This is supported via ontologies, such as SAREF, and knowledge exchange mechanisms, allowing different providers and companies to offer competitive and cost-effective solutions whilst avoiding lock-ins or closed vertical technology implementations. The main innovation of the project is to deploy the concept of semantic interoperability into practice on a large scale, validating acceptance by key market stakeholders from domains for energy and smart buildings. To fulfil the objective of deploying semantic interoperability on a large scale, the first step was to define a reference architecture for the project, that resulted from a detailed state-of-the-art analysis of relevant IoT related reference architectures. The cross-domain semantic interoperability is the transversal and core innovation of the project upon which all the developments concerning the semantic interoperability are made, interpreted by the developed Semantic Interoperability Framework (SIF). Different semantic components are being used to support energy and non-energy services to be demonstrated in seven different pilots in Portugal, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Greece. InterConnect is aligned and actively contributes to EC initiatives, promoting the SIF to foster semantic interoperability as the needed game changer to unlock cross-domain data spaces. This work has been supported in several initiatives, with the architectural discussions that will lead to the integration within the European Data Spaces or GAIA-X initiative, particularly in terms of data sovereignty, creation of semantic knowledge capabilities in those associations and leveraging from the learned lessons from manufacturers associations and alliances in the Interconnect large scale pilots.

Interoperable Solutions Connecting Smart Homes, Buildings and Grids

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Team Members

Team Leaders

I was born in Porto (Portugal) in 8 April 1955, graduated in Electrical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto - FEUP (1977), and completed my PhD in Power Systems in 1988, also from the University of Porto. In November 1996 I got the aggregation title from the University of Porto. In 1978, I joined the Department of Electrical Engineering of FEUP, where I am Full Professor since 2000. In the period 1990-98, I was also the Director of the Library of FEUP. In the period 2001-08, I was the director of the MSc program on Information Management, and I was the director of the PhD program in Sustainable Energy Systems, integrated in the MIT-Portugal program. I lectured several courses in graduation, MSc and PhD courses in Electrical Engineering and Power Systems and supervised the research activities of many graduation, MSc and PhD students. I also collaborated with the Management School of the University of Porto, lecturing MSc courses on Decision-Aid. I was a member of the Senate of the University of Porto since October 2009 until 2017. I retired from FEUP in May 2022.

In 1985 I joined INESC (now INESC TEC). Since 1996 I coordinate the Centre for Power and Energy Systems of INESC TEC, leading 100+ researchers (including 30+ PhD). I was the President of the Scientific Council of INESC TEC since 2001 until 2022. I have been involved in several national, EU and international RTD projects and in development contracts and consultancy for utilities, TSO, DSO, industrial partners, government agencies and for the Regulatory Authority for the Energy Services of Portugal. In particular, I was the responsible for the INESC TEC research team in the EU financed projects “CARE” (Advanced Control Advice for power systems with large-scale integration of Renewable Energy sources), “MORE CARE” (More Advanced Control Advice for Secure Operation of Isolated Power Systems with Increased Renewable Energy Penetration and Storage) and “ANEMOS.PLUS” (Advanced Tools for the Management of Electricity Grids with Large-Scale Wind Generation). I was the Principal Investigator of project “SusCity” (Urban data driven models for creative and resourceful urban transitions), financed by FCT (MPP-Testbed).

I also coordinated the research teams of the contracts “CCR” (Load Profiling and Distribution Network Characterization), with EDP Distribution (the Portuguese DSO), Study on the Impact of Large Renewable Deployment on European Electricity Higher Voltage Systems (JRC-Institute for Energy), “RESERVES” (Mid and Long Term Evaluation of the adequacy of Operational Reserve levels in the Iberian Electric Power Systems), with the TSO of Portugal (REN) and Spain (REE), “RECEP” (Development and testing of methodologies to determine the hosting capacity in the nodes of the National Grid of Portugal) (REN), “ReservaProb” (Software Module for helping setting the operational reserve of the National Electric System) (REN) and “MORA” (Long-term adequacy evaluation of reserves in a multi-area context) (REN). I was also involved in consultancy actions regarding the design of public tenders, namely the call for tenders for new wind power generation in Portugal mainland in 2006)

My research interests include classic and fuzzy modeling of power systems, reliability and optimization and decision-aid, with application to renewables’ integration, electric vehicles’ deployment and smart grids. I was involved in the organization of the international conferences PMAPS’2000, IEEE PPT’2001, ISAP’2015 and EEM’2016. I am a member of the Editorial board of EPSR (Top Reviewer in 2010) and of Int J of Multicriteria Decision Making. I am a senior member of IEEE.

Ricardo Jorge Gomes de Sousa Bento Bessa

Ricardo Bessa was born in 1983 in Viseu, and received his Licenciado (5-years) degree from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal (FEUP) in 2006 in Electrical and Computer Engineering. In 2008, he received the M.Sc. degree in Data Analysis and Decision Support Systems from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto (FEP). He obtained his Ph.D. degree in the Doctoral Program in Sustainable Energy Systems (MIT Portugal) at FEUP in 2013. Currently, he is Coordinator of the Center for Power and Energy Systems at INESC TEC. He worked on several international projects such as the European Projects FP6 ANEMOS.plus, FP7 SuSTAINABLE, FP7 evolvDSO, Horizon 2020 UPGRID, Horizon 2020 InteGrid, H2020 Smart4RES, H2020 InterConnect, HORIZON ENERSHARE, and an international collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. At the national level, he participated in the development of renewable energy forecasting systems and consultant services about energy storage and AI. Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy and received the ESIG Excellence Award in 2022. He is co-authors of more than 60 journal papers and 120 conference papers, and IEEE Senior Member.