HELEN OY

Their core work

Helen Oy is Helsinki's municipal energy company, one of Finland's largest energy utilities providing electricity, district heating, and cooling to the capital region. In H2020, they contributed real-world urban energy infrastructure and operational data to projects focused on smart city transformation and energy system flexibility. Their participation centers on demonstrating how a large-scale district energy provider can integrate renewables, manage grid flexibility, and support sector coupling between power, heat, and transport fuels.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Helen's H2020 journey began with broad smart city demonstration work — urban transformation strategies, integrated planning, and replication across lighthouse and follower cities (mySMARTLife, 2016). Their focus then sharpened toward technical energy system challenges: grid flexibility services, electricity market design, cross-border coordination, and combined power-heat-fuel production (EU-SysFlex and FLEXCHX, 2017-2018). This progression reflects a utility moving from city-level demonstration toward deeper engagement with the technical and regulatory mechanics of energy system decarbonization.

Helen is moving from broad smart city showcases toward the hard technical problems of flexibility, market integration, and renewable fuel production — suggesting future interest in projects tackling grid balancing, demand response, and power-to-X technologies.

How they like to work

Helen participates exclusively as a consortium partner, never as coordinator, which is typical for large utilities that provide real infrastructure and demonstration sites rather than leading research design. With 110 unique partners across 19 countries from just 3 projects, they operate in very large consortia (averaging 37+ partners per project). This makes them an accessible partner — accustomed to working in complex, multi-national teams and contributing operational assets rather than demanding project leadership.

Despite only 3 projects, Helen has built connections with 110 distinct partners across 19 countries, reflecting their participation in large-scale Innovation Actions and pan-European coordination projects. Their network spans broadly across Europe with no narrow geographic bias.

What sets them apart

Helen brings something few partners can offer: a full-scale urban energy utility serving a major European capital, with real district heating networks, power generation assets, and hundreds of thousands of customers. For any project needing a credible, large-scale demonstration site in the Nordics — especially for district energy, flexibility markets, or sector coupling — Helen is a natural fit. Their willingness to open their infrastructure for EU research without needing to lead makes them a low-friction, high-value consortium partner.

Highlights from their portfolio

• EU-SysFlex
  Largest funding share (EUR 607K) in a pan-European flexibility coordination project — reflects Helen's strongest technical engagement in grid-level challenges.
• mySMARTLife
  Helsinki served as one of the lighthouse cities, giving Helen a visible role in demonstrating smart urban energy transformation at city scale.