The increasing electrification of heat and transport coupled with larger RESs deployment of decentralized RESs is disclosing new additional opportunities for demand response. However DR potential has been exploited so far to a very limited extent at end consumer residential level, due to technologies immaturity, regulatory fuzziness, distorted business framework preventing end consumers to capture an appropriate value. To cope with the above challenges, BRIGHT will leverage on a participatory co-creation process to bring individual consumers center stage to deliver a multi-layered community-centred cross-domain adaptable multi-timescale DR supporting framework which combines social-science-driven user experience design for user behavior motivations and monetary/non-monetary incentive design, Digital Twins models for improved consumer predictability, multi-layered P2P DLT/blockchain/smart contracts based semi-decentralized VPPs for capturing intra-community interaction dynamics, value stacking flexibility management algorithms and other AI data-driven energy and-non energy services at the interplay among energy (power, heat, gas), mobility, health (comfort), smart home (AAL, personal safety). The proposed approach and the underlying enablers will be deployed and validated in 4 demo-sites across 4 EU countries where around 1000 mostly residential consumers will be engaged along a variety of different community configurations (LEC, CEC, Virtual Energy Communities, Communities on the Move).

The growing share of variable renewable energy necessitates flexibility in the electricity system, which flexible energy generation, demand side participation and energy storage systems can provide. SIMBLOCK will develop innovative demand response (DR) services for smaller residential and commercial customers, implement and test these services in three pilot sites and transfer successful DR models to customers of Project partners in further European countries. The pilot sites are blocks of highly energy efficient buildings with a diverse range of renewable and cogeneration supply systems and requisite ICT infrastructure that allows direct testing of DR strategies. SIMBLOCK’s main objectives are to specify the technical characteristics of the demand flexibility that will enable dynamic DR; to study the optimal use of the DR capability in the context of market tariffs and RES supply fluctuations; and to develop and implement market access and business models for DR models offered by blocks of buildings with a focus on shifting power to heat applications and optimization of the available energy vectors in buildings. Actions toward achieving these objectives include: quantifying the reliability of bundled flexibility of smaller buildings via pilot site monitoring schemes; combining innovative automated modelling and optimization services with big data analytics to deliver the best real time DR actions, including motivational user interfaces and activation programs; and developing new DR services that take into account the role of pricing, cost effectiveness, data policies, regulations, and market barriers to attain the critical mass needed to effectively access electricity markets. SIMBLOCK’s approach supports the Work Program by maximizing the contribution of buildings and occupants and combining decentralized energy management technology at the blocks of building scale to enable DR, thereby illustrating the benefits achievable (e.g. efficiency, user engagement, cost).

The present context shows the potential of electricity grids to lead the energy system transition as long as new solutions deal with the challenges related to flexibility solutions, grid observability and controllability, market mechanisms and interoperability in a holistic way. The new solutions need to cover the technological aspects by linking smart and integrated services and tools for distribution grid with market mechanisms. This architecture will guarantee a significant impact on the environment and society. The project consortium accepted this challenge and will develop “EUniversal Project” which will enable the transformation of the electricity grid by resolving existing limitations in the energy system through the introduction of a Universal Market Enabling Interface (UMEI). Through this concept, grids will become capable of accommodating all future scenarios through the active use of grid services, acting as an extensive toolbox of flexibility solutions and innovate market mechanisms. The primary goal of EUniversal is to enable the transformation of the energy system into a new multi-energy and multi-consumer concept guaranteeing a sustainable, secure and stable manner of electricity supply by bringing forward an universal, adaptable and modular approach through a Universal Market Enabling Interface (UMEI) to interlink active system management with electricity markets and the provision of flexibility services, taking also into consideration the activation needs and the coordination requirements with both commercial parties and TSOs. To do so, EUniversal will define, develop and validate a set of market-oriented flexibility management services from DER in a real environment, under a large RES integration and high electrification scenario. In order to demonstrate the services generated in the development phase of the project, 3 different DEMO sites (located in Portugal (PT), Germany (DE) and Poland (PL)) will be run to validate the project solutions.

LocalRES project will deploy innovative local energy systems driven by renewable energy communities for a socially fair energy transformation that puts renewable energy into the hands of communities and people. LocalRES will deliver new digital tools that will boost the expected structural change in the current energy system at different levels: 1) generation, increasing the number of small power producers of renewable energy; 2) market, creating local energy markets that enable prosumers to trade energy volumes of their choosing within local communities; 3) distribution, establishing a multidirectional energy flow and promoting REC driven energy services, and 4) consumers, empowering consumers to be active and participating in the energy system and the design of their own Renewable Energy Communities (REC). The main objective of LocalRES is to demonstrate at TRL8 innovative local energy systems in a sector coupling approach, which will be able to interconnect and optimise the joint operation of different energy vectors (electricity, heating, mobility, etc.) by maximising the RES contribution and enhancing the energy system flexibility and supply security. The focus is on the renewable energy communities as main actors for leading the structural change in the current energy system towards the decarbonisation of the local energy systems based on an integrated multidirectional flow approach and prosumers, allowing to maximize the replicability and upscale the potential of the decentralized solutions developed in the project. The LocalRES solutions promote a secure, sustainable, competitive and affordable energy supply for everyone.

DEDALUS will design, develop and demonstrate SSH-driven multi-value energy carrier-agnostic micro (home/apartment)-to macro(building & district-scale) participatory Demand Response (DR) ecosystem, aimed to: (a) facilitate and scale up residential energy consumers massive participation to DR; (b) adapt to a variety of different mono-carrier (electricity, heat) or multi-carrier synergetic scenarios (electricity vs heat and natural gas) at building/district scale, while strengthening social interactions within respective communities. To this aim, we will deploy: 1) a Social Science Framework for multi-dimensional incentives and nudging interventions tools; 2) AI-based individual/building/districts consumers clustering and segmentation algorithms; 3) Open APIs for DR-ready smart appliances; 4) Energy DataSpace adaptation for extended DR interoperability and privacy-preserving DLT/Blockchain Data Governance and flexibility coordination; 5) Digital Twins for consumers-aware DR flexibility planning; 6) Comfort-based flexibility models and tools for serviced apartments for elderly people; 7) flexibility management tools for building and physical/virtual districts energy communities, based on pre-aggregation and shared DR assets; 8) Optimal aggregation of flexible energy assets for district heating and decentralized power2heat 9) Business Sandbox with novel sharing economy social innovation-based business models. DEDALUS solutions will be validated by 5 Front Runners full-scale pilots and replicated by 2 Multipliers in 7 countries, deployed at the interplay of energy, and non-energy (comfort/healthcare, ageing, social innovation) sectors, and operated by different stakeholders (social housing operators, building operators, aggregators, energy communities, retailers/suppliers, DSOs/District Heating Network operators). Capacity building and blueprints will support policy makers and regulators to enable market take-up and EU-wide replication of residential DR.