Aliene van der Veen

My name is Aliene; I am 32 years old and live in a small village in the north of the Netherlands. I have a master degree in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Groningen and have worked for several years in the energy sector as consultant and researcher. I am employed at TNO as an applied researcher where I study developments in the electricity market, especially developments related to digitalization.

The focus of my regular work in TNO is on innovations for the next 2-5 years.  I work part-time on the MEGAMIND project to study developments on the long-term. The goal is to write down my findings in a PhD thesis. As such, I became an external PhD candidate at Eindhoven University.

In the MEGAMIND project, I develop methods and tools that bridge technical and regulatory perspectives on smart grid and especially local energy market innovations. I bridge these world already in my other projects at TNO where I work closely together with technical innovators, social and legal scientists on topics such as flexibility aggregation and energy sharing. In the MEGAMIND project, I study these innovations from a more fundamental point of view and look at the innovations ahead of us such as the coordination of flexible resources in low voltage grids.

I see the MEGAMIND project as an important bridge between academic research and applied research on smart grids. Having multiple universities and researcher with various backgrounds involved in the project helps us to see the bigger picture, which is definitely needed for applied research in this domain. The strong involvement of industrial partners increases the researcher’s understanding of the problem and the solution space.