28 Apr 2026: The “Augmented Grid”: The Era of Smart Microgrids

The article, published in Bulletin.ch, describes how the Swiss electricity grid is facing growing challenges from the simultaneous electrification of heating and transport, with local congestion becoming increasingly common, and argues that the solution lies not in expensive physical grid upgrades but in equipping neighborhoods with local intelligence. Two complementary projects — LASAGNE (2022–2025), which developed the foundational “grammar” of the modern microgrid through grid edge devices, digital twins, predictive algorithms, and decentralized coordination, and O-CEI (2025–2028), a Horizon Europe initiative deploying this technology at scale across 11 countries — are putting this vision into practice in three contrasting Swiss pilot sites (Geneva, Fribourg, and Val d’Anniviers), combining fine-grained energy measurements, social science-based acceptance strategies, and Cloud-Edge-IoT orchestration to create a readable, equitable, and non-intrusive local energy service that smooths consumption peaks and integrates renewable energy without disrupting residents’ daily live