After three years of hard work, the i-STENTORE project reached its final milestone on 16 April 2026 at the Digital Transformation Summit in Madeira. This wasn’t just a project wrap-up, it was a proper look at how energy storage is finally moving out of the research phase and into real-world, industrial operations.
Led by Maria Monteiro Teixeira and moderated by Nikos Bilidis, the event took a 360-degree look at how we can store energy across Europe. The project showed that different regions need different solutions, and we saw some brilliant examples of how that works in practice.
Five lessons from across Europe and the path to market
The session walked through five demonstrators that showed how versatile energy storage has become:
- Slovenia: Using thermal storage in molten glass to help clean up heavy industry.
- Portugal: A focus on making islands self-sufficient by optimizing pumped hydro right here in Madeira.
- Spain: Testing virtual storage systems to make the grid far more flexible.
- Italy: Working on next-gen e-mobility to help batteries last much longer.
- Sweden: A look at how green hydrogen can help create fossil-free steel.
The final panel, featuring Filipe Joel Soares, Pedro Rodriguez, and Ellie Shtereva, got to the practical side of things. It is one thing to have a successful pilot, but it is another thing entirely to scale it up across the continent.
The discussion focused on the “boring but vital” parts of the job: how to build a business model that actually works, how to fix the supply chain, and how to get through the complicated regulations that often slow down green energy projects.
The verdict
We have the technology to make the EU’s energy goals a reality. By sharing data and building strong partnerships, we can move from successful experiments to a resilient, pan-European energy grid.
A huge thanks to the speakers: Nikos Bilidis, Miha Smolnikar, Filipe Joel Soares, Diogo Vasconcelos, Andrea Galtarossa, Pedro Rodriguez, and Ellie Shtereva.
