The University Cantabria (UC) is a young modern public institution whose main purpose is to contribute to social progress through a firm commitment to teaching and scientific excellence. This concern has led to the UC being firmly committed to quality in its work, a commitment put into practice via a process of constant review and improvement of all its teaching, research and administrative activities. UC is now considered one of the ten best universities in Spain with regards to quality and scientific productivity ranking second place in scientific quality for Standard Impact according to the prestigious SCImago report 2014 with an index of 1.57 and a total of 4,363 articles. The UC has around 14,000 students and more than 2,000 staff members. Within the 31 departments there are more than 100 research groups whose research activities cover the most varied aspects of the sciences and arts, and in the fields of both fundamental and applied research.

The University of Cantabria is a leader in research, as is demonstrated by several competitive studies analyzing general and specific aspects of research in Spain and they place the University of Cantabria’s R&D in an outstanding position for its productivity and quality.

R&D groups maintain close and permanent links with companies, public administrations and institutions to collaborate in the development of varied projects and studies that require a high level of specialization and competence.

The projects carried out by its research groups cover the most varied aspects of Arts and Sciences in both basic and applied research. The high level of its scientists, who occupy the first place in the Spanish universities ranking of research periods, has boosted the creation of specialized research centres where outstanding studies are held in collaboration with other public institutions and private companies.

The Group of Advanced Electrotechnologies (GTEA) is part of the Electrical and Energy Engineering Department, University of Cantabria. The GTEA research group carries out research in the following topics linked to Smart Grids: power quality, grid integration of renewable energies and energy efficiency.

The impact of the research activities of the GTEA team has a strong and successful participation in serveral research programmes, both public (PROFIT, CENIT, INNPACTO, RETOS) and private funded with important companies like REE (Spanish TSO), IBERDROLA, VIESGO and GNF (Spanish DSO). The collaboration with the industry is a key point for GTEA group that defines not only the R&D&I topics but also the services offered to the companies.

• To provide scientific support in technical tasks.
• To cooperate with the rest of the project partners towards a smooth demonstration campaign and project development.