R&D Nester, the research and development centre created by REN and the State Grid Corporation of China, hosted students from THE LISBON MBA LAB CONSULTING, a course resulting from a partnership between the Nova School of Business and Economics and the Catholic University-Lisbon. Over a period of three months the MBA students worked as consultants with the R&D Nester team one day each week.

The work focused on the four core projects R&D Nester is currently implementing in partnership with the China Electric Power Research Institute (CEPRI): Renewable Energy Dispatch, Substation of the Future, Energy Storage and Simulation, Planning and Operation of Power Grids.

Nuno Souza e Silva, General Manager of R&D Nester, said "this is a partnership that meets the commitment made when REN's Research and Development Centre was created: to develop activities in a climate of openness towards and in cooperation with the national and international scientific, academic and industrial communities." This project "has allowed R&D Nester to benefit from an external and complementary perspective on its work, and it has provided the external community with an opportunity to work in a business environment."

Now that the partnership has come to an end, Nuno Souza e Silva highlighted the opportunity the MBA students had to "work in a business environment and in close cooperation with R&D Nester's operational teams." According to the head of R&D Nester, "this was the first such project and it went very well.". "It also served to form closer relations with the LMBA, so both parties will certainly try to identify new partnership opportunities," he claimed.

Nuno Souza e Silva explained that the strategy of moving REN's R&D centre closer to the universities will carry on. "We will continue to identify potential opportunities and consolidate existing partnership, not only with the LMBA, but also with research centres such as LNEG or, on a European scale, with the University of Aalborg in Denmark."