Achieving the European environmental objectives for 2020 requires not only technological progress, but also a major change in energy consumption behaviour. The enCOMPASS project will implement and validate an integrated socio-technical approach to behavioural change for energy saving, by developing innovative user-friendly digital tools to make energy consumption data available and understandable for different stakeholders (residents, visitors, public actors, building managers, utilities and ICT-providers) in ways that empower them to achieve energy savings and manage their needs in energy efficient, cost-effective and comfortable ways. It will demonstrate how this can be achieved with a holistic approach that integrates visualisation of energy data collected from smart sensors, user-generated information and context-aware collaborative recommendations for energy saving, intelligent control and adaptive gamified incentives. The enCOMPASS system will be realized as an open platform combining 1) context-dependent energy usage information from in-home sensors (smart meters and smart home appliances for heat and electricity), 2) user-generated information (automatic and manual activity tracking), 3) adaptive gamified energy visualisation and 4) intelligent controls and automation. The platform is developed to achieve sustainable changes in user energy consumption patterns without compromising comfort levels. The enCOMPASS system will integrate existing technology, product and service offerings of the utility and technology partners, customize and extend them to offer improved and new types of their offerings. The enCOMPASS platform is the heart of a new business ecosystem that enables players in the energy domain to develop their own white-label solutions on top of the platform, or to integrate and use individual services or platform modules. This set-up results in societal, environmental and economic impact of enCOMPASS above and beyond the reach of the pilots.

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).

With its “Clean Energy for all Europeans” package (CEP), the European Commission formally recognised and instrumentally brought forward community energy projects, including definitions for “Renewable Energy Communities” (RECs) and for “Citizen Energy Communities” (CECs). The new concepts introduced in the CEP set the course for a more active role of EU citizens in the energy markets. To fully concretize the benefits envisioned by the CEP, a myriad of barriers needs to be overcome and progress needs to be done to clarify and streamline the concepts of REC and CEC, enabling its uptake by all interested citizens. Motivated by that challenge, COMMUNITAS will promote energy citizenship, enabling citizens to take control of their own path towards sustainability by becoming an active element of the energy markets. The project will deliver a Knowledge Base that will provide users with technical, administrative, and legal information on ECs, streamlining the creation and expansion of this concept. COMMUNITAS will also deliver an innovative set of tools - capitalizing on technologies such as IoT, Blockchain and Cloud Computing - to unlock citizens’ active participation in energy markets and communities (all integrated into an open, digital “one-stop-shop” COMMUNITAS Core Platform (CCP)), allowing EC members to have an aggregated position in the energy markets or explore ancillary services using different energy assets or load profiles of the community. As a project that aims to position citizens in the centre of energy markets, COMMUNITAS has citizens at the centre of its own approach: citizens will be involved in Social and Policy Labs throughout the whole project, in order to frequently factor in their feedback, wishes, needs into the core developments of the project.

Heat4Cool proposes an innovative, efficient and cost-effective solution to optimize the integration of a set of rehabilitation systems in order to meet the net-zero energy standards. The project develops, integrates and demonstrates an easy to install and highly energy efficient solution for building retrofitting that begins from the Heat4Cool advanced decision-making tool (which addresses the building and district characteristics) and leads to the optimal solution combining (1) gas and solar thermally driven adsorption heat pumps, which permits the full integration with existing natural gas boilers to ensure efficient use of current equipment , (2) solar PV assisted DC powered heat pump connected to an advanced modular PCM heat and cold storage system, and (3) energy recovery from sewage water with high performance heat exchangers. This retrofitting solution together with a closer interaction between building monitoring, demand/respond supply match, weather forecast and HVAC activation/control through a Self-Correcting Intelligent Building Energy Management Systems (SCI-BEMS) will save at least 10% of energy consumption. The project will implement four benchmark retrofitting projects in four different European climates to achieve a reduction of at least 20% in energy consumption in a technically, socially, and financially feasible manner and demonstrate a return on investment of 8 years. The Heat4Cool consortium will ensure the maximum replication potential of the Heat4Cool solution by a continuous monitoring of technical and economic barriers during the development and validation phases in order to present the building owners and investors with clear energy and economic evidence of the value of implementing Heat4Cool solution. A detailed business plan will be developed in the beginning of the project to strengthen the exploitation plan of the retrofitting package and set the basis for a massive replication of the demonstrated concept across Europe.

inteGRIDy aims to integrate cutting-edge technologies, solutions and mechanisms in a scalable Cross-Functional Platform connecting energy networks with diverse stakeholders, facilitating optimal and dynamic operation of the Distribution Grid (DG), fostering the stability and coordination of distributed energy resources and enabling collaborative storage schemes within an increasing share of renewables. inteGRIDy will: a) Integrate innovative smart grid technologies, enabling optimal and dynamic operation of the distribution system’s assets within high grid reliability and stability standards b) Validate innovative Demand Response technologies and relevant business models c) Utilize storage technologies and their capabilities to relieve the DG and enable significant avoidance of RES curtailment, enhancing self-consumption and net metering d) Enable interconnection with transport and heat networks, forming Virtual Energy Network synergies ensuring energy security e) Provide modelling & profiling extraction for network topology representation, innovative DR mechanisms and Storage characterization, facilitating decision making in DG’s operations f) Provide predictive, forecasting tools & scenario-based simulation, facilitating an innovative Operation Analysis Framework g) Develop new business and services to create value for distribution domain stakeholders and end users/prosumers in an emerging electricity market. inteGRIDy will impact on: a) operations by reconfigurable topology control & supervision b) market by providing new services c) customer by enhanced engagement through DR mechanisms d) transmission by novel forecasting scenarios for the MV/LV areas e) part of the production incorporating innovative storage targeting the optimum use of RES f) environment by CO2 reduction inteGRIDy approach will be deployed and validated in 6 large-scale and 4 small-scale real-life demonstration covering different climatic zones and markets with different maturity.