On the 18th of April, a meeting with the community was held to present and discuss the potential energy communities to be constituted under the AURORA project initiative, either through the donation of funds directly to the University of Évora; or through a partnership with the Red Cross Évora for the creation of a self-consumption energy community with benefits in services or products for the participants. The researchers from the AURORA team in Évora informed the community that they are actively seeking other institutions who might be interested in implementing such an approach. The purpose of such energy communities would be to support the decarbonization of citizens energy consumption. With that in mind, the participation of the audience was requested to help in identifying potential institutions who could be interested in such an approach.
The “Sustainable Action Group” (Grupo de Acção Sustentável) was established with a roadmap to hold sessions on several different topics such as: How to design and implement a photovoltaic system for self-consumption on our own homes, how do batteries work and what are the residential solutions on the market, thermal systems for residential sanitary hot water systems, electric vehicles, how to minimize the impact of photovoltaic power plants and potential solutions such as agrovoltaics, how to build a solar cooker, a sustainable mobility plan for Évora and other topics. Additionally, visits are being planned to a photovoltaic power plant in Évora and to the Concentrated Thermal Power plant of the University of Évora. Both visits will be technical visits designed to answer questions from the participants and allow them to see inside these facilities which are typically do not allow public access.
The event ended with informal discussions amongst the participants with coffee and cake, discussing other potential topics for future sessions to be included on the Sustainable Action Group roadmap.