Lead Partner – LP

The University of Udine (UNIUD) was founded in 1978 and is a public educational institution. It comprises nine faculties with a student body of more than 15.000 students and employs more than 800 professors and researchers.
As part of the PANORAMA project, the Department of Engineering and Architecture (DPIA) is involved with a high level of expertise in the fields of management, local and rural development, and energy systems design and modelling. The DPIA employees are active in the fields of renewable energy, and the design, planning and implementation of the industrial sector. As Lead Partner (LP), UNIUD is mainly responsible for the coordination and implementation of the project’s technical activities. They are also responsible for disseminating the project’s results nationally and internationally.

Project Partners PP1

Research Studios Austria Forschungsgesellschaft mbH (RSA FG) is a public non-university research organisation that acts as a bridge between universities and companies. It consists of six Research Studios, with locations in Salzburg, Vienna, Linz, and St. Pölten, and has been active since 2002 in the field of knowledge and technology transfer, particularly in the areas of digital intelligence, innovations in data science and future technologies.

RSA FG’s iSPACE Studio focuses on the development and delivery of spatial methods and solutions, with a focus on energy systems and the organisation of geographical information. With the help of spatial analysis, simulation and visualisation, the Studio supports companies and public sector organisations in the energy and mobility sector, including administrations and spatial planning authorities.

The PANORAMA project focuses on the analysis of renewable energy potentials, the optimisation of urban and rural energy systems and the development of sustainability scenarios on GIS basis. The Studio is also responsible for the development of web-based geoinformation services for interoperability, the provision of standardised geodata, the integration and harmonisation of heterogeneous data sources, and the processing and visualisation of spatio-temporal data.

By participating in the PANORAMA project, RSA FG studio iSPACE intends to further expand its competence and to give new theoretical and practical knowledge in the Salzburg pilot region.

Project Partners PP2

The Università Iuav di Venezia (IUAV) was founded in 1926 as one of the first Italian schools of architecture and is the only research institute with the needed competences in the Veneto region.

The research group involved in the actualisation of the PANORAMA project is part of the Department of Architecture and Arts, and it coordinates the IUAV staff in the fields of building physics and information technology for smart cities.

With its extensive knowledge in the fields of architecture, landscape and environmental planning, and in particular renewable energy generation systems, the group will support the PANORAMA project in its search for the best forms of integration of systems into the environment.

The group has specific skills and tools for the definition of indicators for the evaluation of integration in the natural and urban environment, for the energy assessment of buildings, as well as GIS and ICT technologies suitable for creating georeferenced urban datasets to support local energy efficiency policies. IUAV’s extensive network with various stakeholders, such as companies, professional firms, research centres, and international partners, enables close collaboration within the region.

Project Partners PP3

The Consorzio del Bacino Imbrifero del Piave (BIM Piave) is a public body that represents 60 municipalities and manages funds for the hydroelectric exploitation of mountain resources in the Belluno region.

The objective of BIM Piave is to promote economic and social developments in the use of hydroelectric, wind and solar energy by, among other things, collaborating with regional players to bring energy improvements to local facilities, promoting ecological innovations in the field of energy saving and renewable energies and coordinating related projects. BIM Piave is currently the most important territorial reference point for the development of energy communities in the Belluno area.

In addition to their expertise in energy planning, they support the PANORAMA project with the SITIC (Sistema Informativo Territoriale Intercomunale – Inter-municipal Territorial Information System) tool, which is used to collect data and ensure proper implementation at legislative level.

Currently, the BIM Piave acts as a central contact point for the development of energy communities and supports them through targeted measures and information conferences in cooperation with the Belluno Study Centre. Through their involvement, small companies in the region can also be integrated into the network to promote the exchange of skills and knowledge and thus support the development of sustainable solutions.

Project Partners PP4

The participation of CML, a leading private partner with specific expertise in the field of renewable energy conversion plants, enables the consolidation of the collaboration with regional players. The company has expertise in mechanical engineering, industrial automation and, in particular, in the production of renewable energy with turbomachinery, such as city-sized mini wind turbines. CML’s production site if the former historical mechanical carpentry workshop of Casonato Mario Pio, the company’s founder. CML is specialised in metal-working, design and implementation of industrial automation systems, and prototyping and production of equipment for the conversion of electrical energy from renewable sources. Its activities within the PANORAMA project mainly focus on contributing to case studies in pilot areas.

Project Partners PP5

The NIP consortium, a local economic development organisation, operates in the Pordenone-Piedmont region and manages the industrial areas of Erto e Casso, Pinedo, Meduno, Montereale Valcellina, and Maniago. These industrial areas employ around 4.500 people in 165 production sectors, including knife production, precision mechanics, metallurgy, iron and steel, construction, agriculture, and the food industry. The NIP Consortium is ISO 14001 and EMAS certified and wants to put an emphasis on environmental sustainability.

Over the past two years, due to the growing importance of renewable energy and the geopolitical situation, the consortium has intensified its efforts in the field of energy sustainability, and it started researching and developing renewable energy communities. In Maniago, the NIP consortium is building the first renewable energy community powered by a newly constructed photovoltaic plant. The project involved analysing the consumption and load profiles of the utilities involved, reviewing regulations and guidelines for the implementation of energy communities in Italy, and comparing them with the companies that will be part of the energy community. The data obtained from this experience will be integrated into the PANORAMA project.

Project Partners PP6

The Ökostrombörse Salzburg was founded in 2005 to promote innovation in the field of green electricity, and to act as an innovation centre for new energy market models. Since 2021, it has specialised in the development and implementation of shared energy infrastructure in residential buildings and grid-connected energy communities, based on the Austrian Energy Community Ordinance. Among the most recent projects, there is the shared use of photovoltaic systems to power public facilities, financed by citizen investments.

As part of PANORAMA, the Ökostrombörse Salzburg will provide a governance framework for the organisation and management of energy communities, and they will help implementing pilot projects in the Salzburg region. New creative tools for the management, balancing, and financing of new renewable energy sources (photovoltaic, wind and hydro) by participants in energy communities will be developed and tested with local and regional stakeholders for different legal frameworks in Austria and Italy. As a non-profit organisation, the Ökostrombörse Salzburg will use PANORAMA’s experience to improve its services and make them available to all funders and business developers in the field of renewable energies use for regional development.