Businesses from any sector can apply. ESA look for motivated teams with established business, financial and technical expertise who can address our focus areas with market-ready concepts.

To be eligible for funding, your team must be based in an ESA member state: this includes the UK.

Potential Tenderers are strongly advised to contact the National Delegation(s) of the countries where their industrial partners (Prime and Subcontractors) are located as soon as possible. A Written Authorisation for ESA funding from the National Delegation(s) is required for the Full Proposal. Contact details for the UK National Delegation are available here.

This Call addresses operational challenges identified by ELES and is organised into three complementary solution clusters:
Cluster A: Forecasting & Grid Operations: Solutions should improve operational awareness, forecasting accuracy and decision-support capabilities across transmission and distribution networks while supporting efficient network utilisation and improved resilience.
Cluster B: Dynamic Thermal Rating Enhancement: Solutions should improve the spatial resolution, accuracy and timeliness of environmental inputs to Dynamic Thermal Rating calculations, particularly across Alpine and pre-Alpine transmission corridors.
Cluster C: Asset Intelligence, Digital Twin & Situational Awareness: Solutions should integrate Earth Observation, Artificial Intelligence, advanced analytics and digital-twin capabilities to improve asset intelligence, infrastructure monitoring and operational awareness across the electricity network.

For full details of each cluster, see the ESA website at the link below.

Space enabled services can significantly enhance electricity grid operations across multiple domains:

• Satellite Earth Observation (SatEO) enables large-scale, near-real-time or latency-dependent monitoring of hazards such as floods, storms, wildfires, landslides, snow and icing events, as well as vegetation encroachment, construction activities and asset surroundings. These capabilities complement local inspections, drone operations, and GIS-based monitoring, while improving crisis awareness, emergency response coordination and long-term climate resilience planning. When combined with advanced analytics and AI techniques, EO data can also support predictive maintenance, asset prioritisation and digital-twin enrichment, enabling a shift from reactive to risk-based operations.
• Satellite Communications (SatCom) enables ubiquitous connectivity to enhance communication links, connectivity of IoT devices and networks of sensors, in remote locations. SatCom also provides real-time, long-range communications with infrastructure monitoring systems (i.e. UAVs/robots), enabling remote operation while assisting enabling technologies such as digital twins.
• Satellite Navigation (SatNav) supports precise asset localisation, time synchronisation for digital operational systems and secure backup communications during emergency or degraded terrestrial network conditions. These services can enhance operational continuity and coordination during large-scale disruptions or crisis events.
• Satellite enhanced forecasting improves the spatial and temporal resolution of weather driven inputs (solar irradiance, wind fields, ambient temperature), directly supporting renewable generation forecasting, load flow prediction, and dynamic thermal rating.

We look for motivated teams with established business, financial and technical expertise who can address our focus areas with market-ready concepts. Submitted proposals must demonstrate:

• Commercial Viability and Sustainable Business Models: Service concepts designed for long-term commercial profitability. Projects targeting public sector or law enforcement users (B2G) are strongly encouraged to incorporate commercial B2B customer streams to ensure post-project sustainability.
• Operational Readiness over Research: A clear focus on deploying pre-operational commercial services rather than pure academic research or basic scientific data exploration. Concepts must be driven by practical market demand and active user support.
• Technical Data Self-Sufficiency: Bidding teams must already possess the internal technical capability to acquire and process downstream space data. Teams must be self-sufficient from the outset, as ESA provides financial and strategic backing rather than direct software engineering support.
• Distinct Space Added Value: Clear, measurable operational or commercial advantages derived directly from the integration of space assets over traditional terrestrial alternatives.