Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RESCHOOL (Strategies and tOOls for Incentivization and management of flexibility in Energy Communities with distributed Resources)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-01-01 al 2024-06-30
In 2019, the Clean Energy for all Europeans package (CEP) was adopted. CEP foresees a more decentralized, flexible, smarter energy system capable to integrate much higher renewable shares. Participation of “active customers/consumers and citizens” and “energy communities” are being established as new market actors, empowered to participate in electricity markets and engaged in individual and collective self-consumption renewable schemas. Unfortunately, barriers exist (unmature regulation, lack of social awareness and knowledge about energy markets, unclear role citizens can play, energy digitalisation and adoption of levering technologies, etc) and these are preventing the creation and growth of energy community initiatives in Europe.
RESCHOOL aims to develop tools and methods to enhance and facilitate the collective participation (energy communities) of citizens in the energy system and the relationship with other stakeholders like DSOs, aggregators, or other energy communities. A social approach, based on collaboration and gamification is followed to foster the engagement of citizens in Energy Communities and to understand their energy usage behaviour. And technologies to facilitate and automate the interaction with third parties in the energy value chain are being developed to facilitate the participation in energy/flexibility markets. The following objectives have been defined to reach the RESCHOOL purpose (S: Socioeconimic, T: Tchnical, V: Validation):
Obj 1 (S). To define, implement and validate a set of intergenerational training, transfers and engagement programmes for the dynamisation (creation, awareness, participation, management) of local energy communities.
Obj 2 (S). To increase the individual awareness and responsiveness of energy uses at household and community level through gamification strategies.
Obj 3: (T) Design of an interoperable architecture supported by a data model for the management of energy communities with aggregated interaction with flexibility markets.
Obj 4 (T): To develop a suite of services to support energy management and trading in energy communities, ready for integration and interoperation with third party solutions. To provide an open collaborative solution with access to individual and aggregated energy data and capabilities to interact with legacy systems and third party solutions in a secure and safe way.
Obj5 (V). To validate a complete solution for the management of energy communities ready to operate with both, flexibility markets and behind the meter (legacy) systems.
Results and lessons learned from validation will be compiled in a blueprint for the creation, development and sustainable management of energy communities including flexibility services. And the project aims to compilate guidelines and recommendations for the further replicability and exploitation of the developed tools and citizen engagement strategies.
RESCHOOL aims to develop tools and methods to enhance and facilitate the collective participation (energy communities) of citizens in the energy system and the relationship with other stakeholders like DSOs, aggregators, or other energy communities. A social approach, based on collaboration and gamification is followed to foster the engagement of citizens in Energy Communities and to understand their energy usage behaviour. And technologies to facilitate and automate the interaction with third parties in the energy value chain are being developed to facilitate the participation in energy/flexibility markets. The following objectives have been defined to reach the RESCHOOL purpose (S: Socioeconimic, T: Tchnical, V: Validation):
Obj 1 (S). To define, implement and validate a set of intergenerational training, transfers and engagement programmes for the dynamisation (creation, awareness, participation, management) of local energy communities.
Obj 2 (S). To increase the individual awareness and responsiveness of energy uses at household and community level through gamification strategies.
Obj 3: (T) Design of an interoperable architecture supported by a data model for the management of energy communities with aggregated interaction with flexibility markets.
Obj 4 (T): To develop a suite of services to support energy management and trading in energy communities, ready for integration and interoperation with third party solutions. To provide an open collaborative solution with access to individual and aggregated energy data and capabilities to interact with legacy systems and third party solutions in a secure and safe way.
Obj5 (V). To validate a complete solution for the management of energy communities ready to operate with both, flexibility markets and behind the meter (legacy) systems.
Results and lessons learned from validation will be compiled in a blueprint for the creation, development and sustainable management of energy communities including flexibility services. And the project aims to compilate guidelines and recommendations for the further replicability and exploitation of the developed tools and citizen engagement strategies.
Current achievements include the review of the EU energy management framework for communities. Particularisation of this context, elaborated as a set of 11 High Level Use cases (HLUCs) split into two categories: technical (HLUC0-5) and SSH/socioeconomic (HLUC6-11). In the SSH field a complete methodology for intergenerational learning based on supervised activities (HLUC7), developed at primary and secondary schools, has been developed. Gamification strategies for engagement have been developed following two complementary approaches: A card deck designed on the values of energy communities to be used in citizen engagement campaigns at broad scale through gamification (HLUC8); and an APP linked to user energy data that extends mission-based approaches with state of the art of rewarding schemas and an accurate user interface (HLU10). In a more technical dimension, RESCHOOL has proposed an architecture for energy and flexibility management at community level, capable to interact with markets, or third parties (e.g. aggregator, DSO, market), as flexibility provider. The proposal considers the integration of existing energy monitoring solutions (HLUC0) to expose enhanced functionalities for energy management (HLUC1/2) and flexibility provision (HLUC3/4), considering different implementations of energy communities according to pilot requirements, including communities integrated by building associations (HLUC5). Implementations are being deployed for validation in four pilots in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Stockholm (Sweden), Girona (Catalunya/Spain) and Athens (Greece). RESCHOOL works on identifying barriers and assessing the impact of regulation on establishing a framework for the economic sustainability of energy communities and the development of associated business models (HLUC11).
The RESCHOOL architecture has not a specific platform (implementation) associated; but aims to integrate existing solutions with new developments in different implementations. Thus, the solutions being deployed in the four pilots will be different and adapted to local requirements and to the existence of legacy systems. RESCHOOL, delivers a specific open-source Community Energy Management system (CEMS), supported by Open Remote, that can be used as a core platform for energy management (already deployed in the Dutch, Spanish and Greek pilots). This is complemented with a proprietary aggregation platform capable to manage flexibility offered by Bamboo energy (being integrated in the Spanish pilot). Collaborative actions will be supported by the LocalLife platform currently deployed and being adapted in the Swedish pilot offering extended capabilities for energy certification and management. Aiming to increase engagement, and awareness, RESCHOOL has developed different initiatives. Thus, a pedagogical proposal for long term engagement has been designed as a tool to support intergenerational learning focusing on schools (primary and secondary) as a knowledge generation and transmission spot towards families and elder people. A second approach for engagement is serios gaming. Two strategies are envisioned with different implementations: on one hand a card deck representing energy communities and their values has been prototyped to perform interactive activities with citizens. The objective is to spread benefits of energy communities with different collectives (more than 30 energy communities, including RESCHOOL ones, have been mapped in the cards). The second approach aims to incentivize energy community members for a more responsible and efficient energy behaviour. In that case an App with access to the energy data, will guide the consumer towards more efficient energy behaviour at both individual and community level.