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Our innovation work

Glava Energy Center is an innovation cluster in solar energy and sustainable energy systems. The cluster is founded in a broad, driven, and competent member network of local, regional, and national energy actors, a physical test infrastructure with around ten test beds, Northern Europe's largest test park for solar energy and over ten years of experience in innovation projects.

Since its inception in 2009, innovators, startups and entrepreneurs have come to the Glava Energy Center with new ideas for products or services in the field of smart sustainable energy systems and solar energy. Thanks to the collaboration with a wide variety of experienced industry experts and researchers, the innovative ideas have been able to be developed forward.

The development of prototypes for testing in real environments is made possible by the Glava Energy Center's resources in the form of test infrastructure, for example test park, laboratory, and weather station. So far, Glava Energy Center has run around 70 innovation projects in the field of solar energy (for example, solar tents, solar cookers, and off-grid systems) as well as sustainable energy systems (for example, microgrids and battery storage and control algorithms for these).

Living Lab in real test environments

Glava Energy Center's innovation system is a so-called Living Lab, which can be compared to a living laboratory. A Living Lab is characterized by co-creative and iterative work to develop test platforms or prototypes in real environments that are continuously tested and, based on the test results, improved. To achieve high sustainability and customer benefit, the intended end users of the product or service are also involved in the innovation process.

Systematizing the innovation process in this way is important both to achieve structure and efficiency. A good structure simplifies collaboration and the development of innovation. High efficiency leads to innovation being driven forward faster. Glava Energy Center's goal for innovation projects is that it should take between six weeks and six months to go from first idea to first test platform.

Test beds for tests and demonstrations

An important part of the Glava Energy Center's Living Lab are the test beds. A test bed is a development environment for tests and demonstrations of products, services, or processes. It is also a platform for collaboration between academies, companies, and organizations.

Glava Energy Center has test beds in:

  • On-grid system
  • Off-grid system
  • Microgrid
  • Weather station
  • Wind measurement
  • Demo roofs
Last edited: 28/04 2023

Innovation

Innovation comes from the Latin innovator, which means "to renew". An innovation is a new idea, for example in the form of a product or service, which no one has officially thought of before and which during a creative development process proves to be promising or functional.

Living Lab

Our Living Lab, or living laboratory, is characterized by co-creation, a fast structured process, development and testing in real environments and the involvement of end users for increased sustainability. The goal is to go from idea to prototype within six weeks to six months.

Test bed

Development environment for tests and demonstrations of products, services or processes. Testbeds are important to enable rapid development work in all industries.