On 19.05.2022, Dr. Vanessa Boas held an introductory presentation on the CSSC Lab project at the CEESEN partnership conference in Ptuj (Slovenia). The CSSC Lab is an INTERREG-financed project, having a budget of roughly 2 million EUR at its disposal, spanning 11 countries.
The project’s main aim is to test and promote city storage and sector coupling solutions in the Danube region. Its main target group are small and medium-sized municipalities since these harbour vast potential in terms of the role they can play in the energy transition. This potential is currently not being seized since municipal staff frequently lacks the necessary know-how needed to implement technical energy projects.
There are a total of four demo centres in the project (Slovenia, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia), all of which test different sector coupling approaches and are running in varying contexts (very small municipalities to medium-sized cities). During the conference session, the speakers from Austria and Slovenia focused on the Austrian and the Slovenian cases, both of which are situated in rural communities.
The Austrian demo centre was launched in June 2021 as part of the solar.one building in Stegersbach. Then, the Slovenian demo centre opened in Desternik, Slovenia in July 2021. Both centres provide the local community with access to an e-vehicle charging station running purely on solar energy. In the case of the Austrian demo centre, heat is also captured and used for heating and cooling the building. In both cases, batteries are used to store the energy to ensure it can be employed when it is needed.
The centres clearly show that rural communities can play an active role in advancing the green transition in Europe! More information can be found here: https://www.cssclab.eu/
