Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BRIGHT (Boosting DR through increased communIty-level consumer engaGement by combining Data-driven and blockcHain technology Tools with social science approaches and multi-value service design)
Período documentado: 2022-05-01 hasta 2023-10-31
The increasing trend for larger penetration of intermittent RESs at grid edge for increasing electricity system decarbonisation has posing an increasing need for flexibility to better balance supply and demand. DR represents a viable option for providing larger share of flexibility through the control of electricity consumption within end customer premises. Achieving significant impacts of load flexibility schemes will however require new customer engagement strategies involving for example energy cooperatives, peer-to-peer trading and citizen energy communities.
BRIGHT realize a multi-timescale DR strategy that works from a day-ahead scheduling up to near real-time adaptive control and allows individual assets to simultaneously provide power balancing service, grid congestion management, and economic benefits to participating stakeholders. From the society point of view a novel community-centred social, technological and business ecosystem is envisioned comprising : i) social science user experience design for end user behaviour understanding and community-level beyond economic incentive; ii) consumer and community digital twins modelling both consumer behaviour and flexibility assets to enable centralized virtual power plants (VPP) governance; iii) Blockchain and smart contracts technology enablers to implement peer-to-peer (P2P) trading/sharing mechanisms for supporting decentralized P2P VPP where self-organizing prosumers may exchange reciprocally information and spontaneously aggregate within dynamic coalitions, while taking explicit control of their flexibility assets, hence better trading off their preferences against grid stakeholders’ requirements; iv) cross-domain value stacking service design and innovative business modelling. In this context Consumers engagement is seen as one of the effective tools to unlock DR potential, and LEC (collectives) are considered as one of the effective means towards active consumer engagement. The key is to ensure that the consumers/prosumers/local communities take the front seat and co-create innovations that enable citizens/communities to play an active role in enacting DR mechanisms that are aligned with their values and expectations (e.g. comfort, well-being, prices, and other values).
The objectives encompass: the design novel attractive consumer-centred multi-value hybrid energy services; Understand energy consumer behaviour; Upscale DR technologies optimal programs design; Develop data-driven algorithms for cross sector optimal energy management ; Deploy a decentralized DR, P2P energy trading, and blockchain enabled VPP governance; Upscale the hybrid edge cloud data-driven metering infrastructure ; Deploy and validate the BRIGHT environments including innovative open cooperative sharing-economy local business models; Produce best practices blueprints and guidelines.
BRIGHT realize a multi-timescale DR strategy that works from a day-ahead scheduling up to near real-time adaptive control and allows individual assets to simultaneously provide power balancing service, grid congestion management, and economic benefits to participating stakeholders. From the society point of view a novel community-centred social, technological and business ecosystem is envisioned comprising : i) social science user experience design for end user behaviour understanding and community-level beyond economic incentive; ii) consumer and community digital twins modelling both consumer behaviour and flexibility assets to enable centralized virtual power plants (VPP) governance; iii) Blockchain and smart contracts technology enablers to implement peer-to-peer (P2P) trading/sharing mechanisms for supporting decentralized P2P VPP where self-organizing prosumers may exchange reciprocally information and spontaneously aggregate within dynamic coalitions, while taking explicit control of their flexibility assets, hence better trading off their preferences against grid stakeholders’ requirements; iv) cross-domain value stacking service design and innovative business modelling. In this context Consumers engagement is seen as one of the effective tools to unlock DR potential, and LEC (collectives) are considered as one of the effective means towards active consumer engagement. The key is to ensure that the consumers/prosumers/local communities take the front seat and co-create innovations that enable citizens/communities to play an active role in enacting DR mechanisms that are aligned with their values and expectations (e.g. comfort, well-being, prices, and other values).
The objectives encompass: the design novel attractive consumer-centred multi-value hybrid energy services; Understand energy consumer behaviour; Upscale DR technologies optimal programs design; Develop data-driven algorithms for cross sector optimal energy management ; Deploy a decentralized DR, P2P energy trading, and blockchain enabled VPP governance; Upscale the hybrid edge cloud data-driven metering infrastructure ; Deploy and validate the BRIGHT environments including innovative open cooperative sharing-economy local business models; Produce best practices blueprints and guidelines.
The project activity identified novel multi-value services for DR engagement based on the end user, business, interoperability, privacy and cyber-security requirements. Principal barriers and drivers for consumer engagement in demand response were performed and resulted in principles adopted for the creation of the citizen engagement framework.
Tools developed include: Marketplace for energy and flexibility trading, Interoperable Home Automation Gateway, Smart home service manager, tool for flexibility optimization of local charging infrastructure, mobile app for Customer engagement and DR campaigns. Under the technological perspective: Bright energy forecasting tool, integrating blockchain to address privacy concerns; digital twins on flexibility assets, and clustering and segmentation algorithms for household consumption profiles; decision-making algorithms to provide local flexibility services, specifically for domestic hot water heaters, storage and electric vehicles; nature inspired heuristics for optimal combination of cross energy services (e-mobility and electricity in Italian pilot and comfort and electricity services in Slovenian pilot); community level energy flexibility market and blockchain based DR settlement tools including thermal energy and game theory-based matching; distributed energy ledger for community including homomorphic encryption for privacy preservation; community level governance model using smart contracts for flexibility aggregation.
Tools developed include: Marketplace for energy and flexibility trading, Interoperable Home Automation Gateway, Smart home service manager, tool for flexibility optimization of local charging infrastructure, mobile app for Customer engagement and DR campaigns. Under the technological perspective: Bright energy forecasting tool, integrating blockchain to address privacy concerns; digital twins on flexibility assets, and clustering and segmentation algorithms for household consumption profiles; decision-making algorithms to provide local flexibility services, specifically for domestic hot water heaters, storage and electric vehicles; nature inspired heuristics for optimal combination of cross energy services (e-mobility and electricity in Italian pilot and comfort and electricity services in Slovenian pilot); community level energy flexibility market and blockchain based DR settlement tools including thermal energy and game theory-based matching; distributed energy ledger for community including homomorphic encryption for privacy preservation; community level governance model using smart contracts for flexibility aggregation.
The project developed the new citizen and customer engagement framework through co-creation sessions with project partners. The framework has been evaluated following a multi-step approach: 1) identify the needs and develop specific design and evaluation methods to further develop DR strategies and instruments with and for energy cooperatives, peer-to-peer trading and citizen energy communities considering the needs and behaviours of and engaging the members (consumers) part of communities, going beyond economic incentives ; 2) implement new design and evaluation methods and tools in practice, in the pilots and use cases enabling citizens/communities to play an active role in enacting DR mechanism. The result is a finalized consumer and citizen engagement framework for the development of DR strategies and instruments.
For Community and Customer Digital Twin Models the project achieved:
- Improvement of the fine-grained prediction of energy consumption, production and flexibility via a hybrid approach combining classification and regression models
- Design of a clustering methodology for residential users to accurately assess the performance (and thus value) of an adaptive control strategy
- Design of energy disaggregation algorithms for residential smart meter profiles, to get a better insight in the available flexibility and relevant user behavior in households
- Design of data-driven digital twins to assess the performance and characterize the available flexibility of flexible assets
The expected results have been validated through multi-objective framework for cross-sector value-stacking of multiple flexibility services, which increases system stability and facilitate increased integration of renewables.
Moreover we developed a blockchain-based framework for the energy community's self-governance via decentralized DR programs and P2P energy and flexibility trading. The framework integrates the following itools: A scalable community-level blockchain energy ledger that immutably stores, digitally fingerprints, and shares the energy (electricity, heat, etc.) data provided by energy meters as transactions. P2P markets to enable prosumers to trade their energy or flexibility from heterogenous sources (i.e. different forms energy or cross energy sector) while considering competitive or cooperative trading models for flexibility aggregation. Self-enforcing smart contracts for managing the community's flexible entities enabling the near real-time settlement of DR programs.
For Community and Customer Digital Twin Models the project achieved:
- Improvement of the fine-grained prediction of energy consumption, production and flexibility via a hybrid approach combining classification and regression models
- Design of a clustering methodology for residential users to accurately assess the performance (and thus value) of an adaptive control strategy
- Design of energy disaggregation algorithms for residential smart meter profiles, to get a better insight in the available flexibility and relevant user behavior in households
- Design of data-driven digital twins to assess the performance and characterize the available flexibility of flexible assets
The expected results have been validated through multi-objective framework for cross-sector value-stacking of multiple flexibility services, which increases system stability and facilitate increased integration of renewables.
Moreover we developed a blockchain-based framework for the energy community's self-governance via decentralized DR programs and P2P energy and flexibility trading. The framework integrates the following itools: A scalable community-level blockchain energy ledger that immutably stores, digitally fingerprints, and shares the energy (electricity, heat, etc.) data provided by energy meters as transactions. P2P markets to enable prosumers to trade their energy or flexibility from heterogenous sources (i.e. different forms energy or cross energy sector) while considering competitive or cooperative trading models for flexibility aggregation. Self-enforcing smart contracts for managing the community's flexible entities enabling the near real-time settlement of DR programs.