Press Release: Making demand response management easier for aggregators

The growth of renewable energy generation across Europe and the exponential development of the Internet of Things in smarter homes has meant that the need for more, and simpler, flexible energy systems has increased. As aggregators play a key role in establishing flexible energy services, Sim4Blocks has identified a universal language to simplify automated information exchanges and exploit flexible assets in a scalable way.

© Insight Publishers

As houses become increasingly smarter and are fitted with more power-based devices such as fridges and heat pumps, aggregators see this as a patent opportunity to achieve greater energy flexibility as these devices, known as flexible assets, can be turned on and off on demand. However, a key challenge is that these flexible assets run off different languages making it almost impossible, or extremely time consuming and costly for aggregators to regulate and unlock their flexibility.

Sim4Blocks has come up with a unique universal language called domain specific language. This new language enables these flexible assets to communicate their flexibility to aggregators in the same generic language, making it easier for them to manage demand response services across blocks of buildings.

Sim4Blocks is a well-established EU-funded project that has been working closely with REstore, an independent European demand response aggregator, to make it easier for aggregators to exploit the flexible potential of their customers’ energy whilst offering them household savings and earnings.

The new language will make it easier for aggregators to streamline processes with such standardisation of (often automated) information exchange and bilateral agreements. It is also made up of simple ingredients so that it is easy for local engineers working on the buildings to use it. A smart explanatory factsheet has been produced by Sim4Blocks to explain in more detail the significance of this development it and can be found here: https://www.sim4blocks.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Universal-Language_Factsheet7.6.pdf

Sim4Blocks

Sim4Blocks is a four-year project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme that will develop innovative demand response services for residential and commercial applications. The project will combine decentralised energy management technology at the blocks-of-buildings-scale to enable demand response.

Three pilot sites in Germany, Spain and Switzerland each have diverse energy systems with the infrastructure necessary for testing demand response strategies. The project will aim to increase energy flexibility in the electrical grid and will hopefully introduce cost savings for consumers as well, whilst helping to decarbonise the power sector.

The Sim4Blocks website can be found here:
www.sim4blocks.eu

To talk to someone about the project or to arrange an interview, please contact Amelia Brice: [e-mail]

Countries

Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, United Kingdom