Lessons from EU proposals shared at a CIGRE-CIRED workshop on EU funding

On 15 October 2026, CIGRE-CIRED Slovenia, through its Women in Energy (WIE) section, held the workshop “From Smart Grids to Future Investments: Green Transition and EU Funding 2028–2034” in Ljubljana. The workshop brought together representatives of companies, research institutions and regulators to exchange experience with EU-funded projects in the energy sector.

After the opening address by the Energy Agency, the programme covered the direction of Horizon Europe for 2028–2034, the role of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) in developing grids, experience with implementing Horizon projects, and smart grids and flexible connections already operating in Slovenia. A panel discussion on the role of EU funding in company development closed the day, with speakers from EIMV, Elektro Ljubljana, Operato and the Directorate for Energy.

Tamara Smolej Polovič from the SynGRID coordination team gave the talk “An inside view: proposal, management and communication in EU projects”. She drew on evaluation reports from past proposals to show where proposals most often lose points, what evaluators value, and how to use feedback from a rejected proposal. She mentioned SynGRID as an example of a project that builds on earlier work, in this case STREAM, which its evaluators named as a strength.

Karina Medved Bregar from Petrol, a SynGRID partner, presented how CEF and Horizon projects shape the development of new solutions.

Strengthening the capacity of institutions to prepare and run European projects is one of SynGRID’s aims, and we thank the organisers for the opportunity to share this experience.