The context of pandemic has not made the work of the FLEXCoop consortium easy, fortunately we can count on few additional months to finalise the project.
Some additional months to recover from the pandemic
In the context of COVID-19 pandemic, FLEXCoop progresses have known some difficulties. Some of our pilots decided to move away from their home during the lock-down, but also on-site maintenance was being made more difficult. On the consortium side, our physical meetings have all been cancelled. This has meant only remote collaboration for our 12 partners spread across 8 countries, and made even more difficult the delicate operation of modules integration.
FLEXCoop is a 36 month project which started in October 2017 and was meant to end in... September 2020 (!). However, in the light of the past difficulties, the European Commission agreed to provide the project with a four months extension. This will enable the project to take advantage of some of the cold weeks of the end of the year in order to perform further test an refine the solution.
What about now?
All consortium partners are mobilised to catch up with the time lost during the lock-down. The first flexibility tests have been performed in labs during the Summer. While the solution is being adjusted, the first live tests with end-users are to take place in Autumn.
Complementarily intense visioning sessions are being made with tech partners and pilot sites partners to refine aggregator and prosumer apps. Living labs with end-users are being planned so they can try out FLEXCoop functionalities and provide feedback on the tools and on possible future services by their cooperative.