Daniel Borg (CEO of the Gozo Business Chamber) and Dr Stephen Abela who is assisting the Chamber in this project, participated in the 5th semestrial Consortium Meeting of the MAESHA project. The project partners gathered on Mayotte, the island where the core demonstration activities will take place. This provided an excellent opportunity to review the progresses, challenges and next steps of this project on the decarbonisation of energy networks of islands.
The main objective of MAESHA is to decarbonise the energy systems of geographical islands by fostering the large deployment of RES through the installation of tailored innovative flexibility services based on a close study and modelling of local energy systems and community structures. MAESHA will demonstrate the solutions on the French overseas island of Mayotte and study replicability potential on 5 follower islands representing more than 1.2 million inhabitants spread in geographical Europe and overseas territories. The island of Gozo will be one of these follower islands.
On day 1, the regular consortium meeting took place. The meeting was introduced by Claude Hartmann CEO of EDM (Electricite de Mayotte), and Prof. Dr. Boris Heinz, Project Coordinator of MAESHA and Chairman of the Community Energy and Adaptation to Climate Change department at Technische Universität Berlin. The status and upcoming steps for the 11 running Work Packages were reviewed during this day. Work Programme 10 in which the Chamber will be participating was initiated during this meeting. During the second day two site visits were organised at the plant which stores energy from solar panels (Albioma battery), and the main electricity power station in Longoni. Specialised workshops were conducted in the afternoon. On the third day the meetings took place at EDM (the energy company in Mayottee) with the main discussions focusing on the role of energy communities in this project.
