The EnergyGuard project is developing a European-scale testing and experimentation facility for AI in the energy sector.

Described for Enlit by Sotiris Pelekis, Senior Researcher and AI Engineer in the Decision Support Systems Laboratory at the National Technical University of Athens, EnergyGuard is establishing a network of five interconnected Energy AI testing and experimentation facilities (TEFs) to accelerate the testing, validation, and deployment of AI-driven energy solutions across Europe. The TEFs cover different key areas of the energy domain including smart grid and microgrid, hydrogen, flexible communities, and energy-efficient buildings. Each TEF focuses on a specific energy vector, but they operate as one pan-European infrastructure.

The facilities offer both physical testing and virtual environments that replicate real-world operating conditions for AI validation. Energy infrastructures represented by high-fidelity digital twins include electricity networks with high shares of renewables; microgrids and energy communities; hydrogen production and storage systems; buildings and mobility applications. The digital twins serve as the foundation for AI experimentation. Developers can deploy algorithms, train models, and benchmark performance against real operational data, all within a secure, interoperable framework.

In addition to datasets and simulation models, each TEF also provides AI inference for APIs, software services, and validation tools – all accessible through a unified AI development and testing environment.

Through the EnergyGuard AI sandbox, developers can evaluate and refine their solutions by evaluating them under real-world energy conditions, using shared datasets, digital twins, and benchmarking tools before advancing to the acceptance environment, where performance and conformity with the EU AI Act are formally assessed to ensure readiness for real-world deployment.

EnergyGuard is powered by MeluXina, one of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in Europe. The project is funded under Horizon Europe and co-financed by the European Union.