Renewable energy must be a standard facility at the Port of Hirtshals. The challenge lies in the variance between the production of renewable energy and the energy consumption at the port. As a result, renewable energy is lost, and the port's businesses and industry consume expensive energy in an inefficient way. With ports as energy-intensive sites, there lies a great potential in energy optimization. Through data-driven processes the EFFORT project will increase energy efficiency at the Port of Hirtshals by providing flexibility services that will contribute to:

• avoid loss of resources when producing large amounts of renewable energy,
• increase security of supply,
• and reduce the need for expansion of the electricity grid through optimized capacity utilization.

EFFORT's output consists of guidelines and management tools for the future development of the port, where energy flexibility, sector coupling and digitization are keywords. The vision is for industries and ports to use the project's guidelines and roadmaps to establish more flexible energy solutions in the future.

The project is supported by ELFORSK, which is a publicly funded pool of 25 million DKK., which is administered by Green Power Denmark. ELFORSK supports innovation and research projects that promote energy efficiency and flexibility solutions via data analysis, digitization and sector coupling across electricity, district heating and transport. EFFORT is supported with 8 million DKK., which is the largest grant given to a single project from the ELFORSK pool.