ECom4Future enables technological innovation (from TRL 3 to TRL 5) by validating a new paradigm of optimally designed local energy communities and quantifying the effectiveness of the proposed solutions in demonstration sites representative of three European regions (in terms of energy policy adoption, regulation, renewable energy availability and technology uptake): North (Sweden), Centre (Austria and Germany) and East (Romania). The aim is to develop a prototype integrated system solution tailored to local communities, capable of hosting a high share of renewable energy (up to 100%) in the dynamic local supply by 2030, utilising different sources of flexibility (demand-side, storage and sector coupling options) and complying with the Transition Initiative 5 of the CETPartnership.
The project focus is on the increasing decentralisation of the energy system and the current lack of robust and user-centric energy services. Furthermore, energy data with high time granularity on both the local generation and demand side will be derived for several classes of user profiles that characterise the customers in the energy communities, i.e. the consumers in the regions of the project partners. The energy community members will trade different degrees of uncertainty for the energy exchange at the community level. Novel distributed state estimators for the operation of the community grid are proposed to allocate local generation capacities (with minute-time resolution) considering the estimated demand flexibility bands. Demand flexibility is linked to security and privacy aspects in the ICT environment of energy communities and requires the development of connectors for devices at the experimental site and the FIWARE data analysis platform. The data-driven profiling of energy communities for market-based optimisation will be translated into easy-to-acquire local landmarks on the path to climate neutrality.
ECom4Future utilises information on the consumption and generation of prosumers. A human-centred, multidisciplinary approach will be used to gain insights into how technical, psychological and legal framework conditions influence public support and willingness to actively participate in future energy systems. Market-based optimisation algorithms will enable tailor-made solutions for setting up, structuring and operating complex prosumer systems and energy communities.