Collaboration supported by 4TU.Energy and 4TU.NIRICT Community Funding has brought together eight universities and SURF to develop a visionary proposal for the future of energy systems. This collaboration has now resulted in a groundbreaking consortium: UTOPYS — Understanding Large and cOmplex Power sYstems.
UTOPYS has been awarded €16.5 million through the Large-Scale Research Infrastructure (LSRI) programme of the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This investment will enable partners to build and connect state-of-the-art infrastructure for research into complex, interconnected power systems that are secure, sustainable, and resilient.
Why UTOPYS matters
The energy transition is transforming how electricity is generated, transported, and consumed. With rapid growth in renewables, electrification, digitalisation, and cyber-physical interdependencies, the power system is becoming more complex than ever. UTOPYS will help researchers and industry partners to:
- Model and test large, multi-domain power systems across hardware, software, and data layers.
- Validate innovations for stability, flexibility, and cybersecurity under realistic operating conditions.
- Accelerate scaling of solutions from lab prototypes to grid-ready applications.
What the investment enables
The LSRI grant will be used to establish and link experimental facilities, datasets, and digital twins across participating institutions, creating an open, federated research infrastructure. This will allow multi-site experiments and reproducible studies, strengthen national collaboration, and position the Netherlands as a leader in next-generation power systems research.
A 4TU-powered collaboration
The initiative was enabled by 4TU.Energy and 4TU.NIRICT Community Funding, which catalysed early collaboration and joint proposal development between eight universities and SURF. The UTOPYS consortium builds on this foundation to deliver shared research capacity for the Dutch—and European—energy transition.
About 4TU.Energy
4TU.Energy connects researchers and educators across the four Dutch technical universities to drive innovation for a sustainable, affordable, and reliable energy system. Through community funding, joint programmes, and shared infrastructure, 4TU.Energy accelerates collaboration and impact across disciplines and institutions.
About 4TU.NIRICT
4TU.NIRICT (Netherlands Institute for Research on ICT) stimulates and facilitates ICT research collaboration across the four technical universities, strengthening the scientific and economic impact of ICT in the Netherlands.
About the Joint call for funding 4TU.Energy and 4TU.NIRICT
The joint funding scheme between 4TU.Energy and 4TU.NIRICT is designed to stimulate and support interdisciplinary collaboration between the energy-research and ICT-research communities of the four Dutch technical universities.
Detailed funding information can be found on a separate webpage here.
This joint call has played a pivotal role in enabling early-stage collaboration, laying the groundwork for larger projects—such as UTOPYS—to emerge.