InterPED aims to enable the concept of PEDs via sector coupling, cross-vector integration, demand flexibility and consumer engagement, while improving utilisation of local RES, storage and excess/waste heat (E/WH) sources. InterPED will couple RES, storage and E/WH sources (community assets) available in the pilots with the necessary know-how and ICT expertise to ensure improved operation of PEDs and grid robustness. This will allow InterPED’s end users (aggregators, service providers, urban planners) to deliver benefits to both, grid stakeholders (DSO/TSOs) and final consumers (and prosumers). To do so, InterPED will deliver a scalable and adaptable cloud-based platform composed of analytical, modelling and optimization services for planning, supervision and control of integrated PEDs (including power, heating and cooling, mobility). Optimized PED operations will be demonstrated at pilot sites, while enabling a cooperative demand response (DR) strategy at community/district level. In addition to automated control actions, InterPED intends to engage the consumers via community building (e.g. CECs or RECs), representing a still largely untapped source of flexibility, while enabling them to play an active role in grid balancing. By making it cloud-based and by ensuring system interoperability (both syntactic and semantic), InterPED will enable aggregators and actors positioned to adopt proposed business model (e.g. ESCOs, energy retailers, DSOs) to deploy the InterPED solution immediately almost anywhere, while reducing the cost to its scalability. The key strategy to ensure solutions will work well in an everyday context of consumers, is that InterPED will involve the consumers (community) and service providers in the design of the solutions through participatory co-design processes. InterPED will verify the technical and commercial feasibility of its integrated package in four large-scale pilots, each representing an existing PED.

Building on results of recently (or soon to be) concluded EU projects, FEDECOM aims to enable integrated local energy systems through sector coupling and cross-energy vector integration, increasing RES penetration via optimal utilisation of energy dispatch, storage and conversion assets. FEDECOM pursues the idea of electricity becoming the leading energy carrier, with power grids as the backbone for the decarbonisation of all energy sectors and aggregators as the cornerstone enabler of the potential exploitation. FEDECOM adopts and maximizes the potential synergies of two complementary deployment strategies: (i) direct electrification (e.g. via demand electrification), and (ii) indirect electrification (with power-to-X technology). FEDECOM will deliver a scalable and adaptable cloud-based platform composed of analytical, modelling and optimization services for planning, supervision and control of integrated local energy systems (power, gas, heating and cooling, industry, electric and hydrogen mobility). Optimized operations of the integrated systems will be demonstrated as part of hybrid RES/storage infrastructures, while enabling a holistic cooperative demand response (DR) strategy across federation of energy communities. With a concept of federated energy communities, FEDECOM unlocks the flexibility potential, enable energy exchange, and provide coordinated actions across near and remote sites, while maximizing the positive impact on grid transmission level. FEDECOM’s integrated package will be verified on three real large-scale pilots, each composed of multiple (federated) demo sites (communities): Spanish Virtual Green H2 Federation, Swiss Residential Hydropower Federation and BENElux cross-country e-Mobility Federation. After FEDECOM, local energy communities and service providers will be fully trained and upskilled via dissemination and engagement activities to take full ownership of FEDECOM solution and its business ecosystem.

HYPERGRYD aims at developing a set of replicable and scalable cost effective technical solutions to allow the integration of RES with different dispatchability and intrinsic variability inside Thermal Grids as well as their link with the Electrical Grids, including the development of innovative key components, in parallel with innovative and integrated ICT services formed by a scalable suite of tools for the proper handling of the increased complexity of the systems from building to Local Energy Community (LEC) levels and beyond, accelerate the sustainable transformation, planning and modernization of District Heating and Cooling (DHC) toward 4th and 5th generation. HYPERGRYD also aims at developing real time management of both electrical and thermal energy flows in the coupled energy network complex, including the synergies between them. Therefore, HYPERGRYD aims at three over-arching General Objectives: - To prove Smart Energy Networks as the future of Efficient Energy Management in DHC in synergy with the Electrical Grids in LEC/Smart Cities of the future, - To define the roadmap to design and planning of future DHC as well as the modernization of the existing ones in different climates and RES penetration levels toward 4th-5th generation, -To demonstrate HYPERGRYD RES-based Enabling Technologies, Smart Energy Grid Solutions empowered by new ICT tools and services as the key for this evolution. During the project, the HYPERGRYD?s solutions will be implemented across 4 Live-In-the-Labs cases in 3 representative climates provided by the consortium, with special consideration to their cost effectiveness and potential replicability to finally achieve these 3 main objectives. All these tasks will follow the proposed work program activities to ensure systematic and scientific performance measures, feedback and powerful exploitation.

THUMBS UP aims to develop and demonstrate thermal energy storage (TES) at daily (based on environmental friendly PCM) and weekly level (based on TCM sorption technology) solutions to be easily integrated in EU buildings (both connected and not-connected to DHN) to increase their energy efficiency as well as to exploit Power-to-Heat (PtH) approaches also to make EU Buildings as grid flexibility actors. THUMBS UP wants to overcome all the limits of state-of-the-art building-integrated PCM and TCM TES technologies, increasing TES energy density and reducing CAPEX. THUMBS UP innovates at different levels, from modelling to materials and enhance heat exchanger solutions, targeting demonstration at TRL 7. High-performance TES solutions part of an EU sustainable economy is a factor at the core of THUMBS UP. The project develops truly i) bio-based PCMs from raw materials currently wasted in the EU food industry, turning them into valuable TES materials and ii) TCMs relying exclusively on non-hazardous materials and on water as working fluid. THUMBS UP TES will be demonstrated in 3 demosites (a single-family building in Spain and 2 multi-family buildings in Sweden/Spain) in different EU climates and energy market contexts also to assess THUMBS UP replication potential in two replication sites (ITA, NL). Via its demonstration and replication campaign, THUMBS UP promotes TES role as key enabling technology to optimize thermal comfort and energy efficiency in buildings as well as to promote PtH as facilitator of RES grid integration in a sector coupling approach, to be studied via innovative modelling tools. THUMBS UP gives specific attention to how to fully integrate TES solutions into buildings and wider smart energy networks by combining the technology advancements with TES-tailored digital innovations. THUMBS UP widens the capability to control, monitor and forecasts how to operate building-integrated TES systems to provide services toward both the H&C and power sector.

To reach net-zero emissions by 2050, annual clean energy deployment needs to triple by 2030. Two major challenges hinder progress: grid operators lack the tools to manage distributed energy resources effectively, and citizens are not equipped to effectively participate in energy markets, particularly in peer-to-peer trading, which would foster individual investment in DERs. While the EU has established a legal framework for energy communities, its implementation has been restrictive, leading to energy communities based on predetermined, community-level prices and effectively peer-to-market rather than true P2P trading. The INTELLIGENT project will provide advanced P2P technology and demonstrate its benefits in 4 diverse EU communities to encourage regulators in EU member states to empower more advanced local energy sharing and trading. INTELLIGENT’s comprehensive P2P trading infrastructure includes interoperable decentralised energy exchange components, secure data exchange, and optimised trading and flexibility management for citizens and grid operators. These tools will be open source and protocol and regulation-agnostic, customisable for specific market requirements.The project leverages and extends the capabilities of the GSY DEX, an open-source P2P exchange software, which employs blockchain technology to enable grid-aware, secure, and automated exchange while fully accounting for network constraints. Innovations centres on a bottom-up, asset-based energy market design with sophisticated, AI/ML and blockchain-powered trading and flexibility mechanisms, supported by dynamic grid fee models and interoperability with grid operators, asset management and other related services. . INTELLIGENT's goal is to advance P2P energy trading technology, making it more accessible, secure, and efficient to optimise the economic and environmental benefits for citizens, while supporting grid operators to better address grid stability and congestion management.