The Greenvolt pilot sites are located in Portugal and represent two distinct energy communities coordinated by Greenvolt Comunidades, a company specialising in the creation and operation of collective self-consumption models across various sectors. Greenvolt currently manages over 65 operational energy communities, with more than 160 under implementation across the country, demonstrating significant experience in deploying solar-based community energy models. For the INTELLIGENT project, two of these communities – Feirense Football Stadium and Bicesse Kindergarten – have been selected to serve as real-world pilot sites. Each offers a unique demographic and functional context: one focusing on sports and residential integration, the other on education and energy poverty mitigation.
The Feirense Football Stadium, located in Santa Maria da Feira, includes a football club, 16 residential consumers, and one company. The community operates on a collective self-consumption basis supported by a substantial 647 kW PV system, generating approximately 722,000 kWh annually. The surplus energy is dynamically shared among community members, with data collected via smart meters provided by the Portuguese DSO, E-Redes. These meters transmit consumption and generation data in 15-minute intervals, enabling detailed monitoring of bi-directional energy flows. This site is particularly valuable for testing how large-scale local generation can interact with residential consumption under varying load conditions.
Feirense Football Stadium, Portugal
Media Livre is a collective self-consumption community, located in central Lisbon, comprising 5 prosumers and 2 consumers, with additional consumers in the process of joining. The community includes 5 photovoltaic installations and 1 electric vehicle charging area. It has a total installed RES capacity of 301 kWp and an estimated annual surplus of approximately 28,000 kWh/year.
Bicesse Kindergarten, Portugal
Data management at both sites is structured around two streams: smart meter data from E-Redes and high-resolution measurements from local data loggers installed at PV systems. Smart meter data covers grid consumption and self-consumption for both consumers and prosumers, while data loggers offer real-time, 15-minute data on PV output and energy flows. Greenvolt has developed a digital platform that enables community members to visualise real-time production, sharing, and consumption, view historical trends, and export data for external analysis. This platform facilitates transparency, user engagement, and performance tracking at both the individual and community level.
Despite the robust deployment of PV systems and monitoring infrastructure, both pilot sites currently lack diversity in energy assets, such as batteries, heat pumps, or EV chargers. This limits their potential for testing advanced functionalities related to flexibility, optimisation, or demand-side control within the INTELLIGENT project. As a result, the project team has identified the need for infrastructure upgrades. This evaluation is ongoing.