The overall purpose of the SUSTENANCE project is to set up sustainable energy systems for achieving novel carbon neutral energy communities. The project focus on the development of smart technological concepts ensuring a green transition of the energy systems with higher share of local renewable energy and more efficient integrated energy solutions for the electrical, heat, water, waste as well as transportation infrastructure. The set up solutions will at the same time have good socio-economic impact in the local communities and ensure ecofriendly solutions and good infrastructures, which provides support to sustaining the essentials of life. The demonstration activities are set up in four countries: Denmark, India, Netherlands and Poland. These countries has different local energy resources, socio-economic, user behavior, political structures, market conditions and regulations. The project will show how same technical concepts such as coupling of different energy vectors, storage solutions, demand response, intelligent control schemes and digitalization can be applied to all demonstration cases despite the huge differences in the local conditions and regulations. Road maps will be set up based on these technical solutions together with guidelines for methods for user engagement and ensuring cooperation among the users in relevant cases leading to cooperatives. Finally, business cases will be set up for the different demonstration sites seen from both user perspective, small enterprises and utility point of view taking into account the local conditions. In this way, synergy effects with inputs from the different demonstration sites are expected and the results give abundant possibilities for maximum impact and replication in other local communities in the four countries as well as in societies worldwide.

The aim of the SERENE project is to develop and demonstrate sustainable, integrated, cost-effective and customer-centric solutions for local communities. The idea is to integrate different energy system carriers and new renewable generation units in the local communities based on their social and technical status today to meet their energy needs in the coming years. The users has to be involved in the changes of the energy system and be informed about different technical opportunities and business cases to make decisions about their participation. Depending on the actual site, the new energy system involve different storage technologies (battery energy storages, heat storages, water storage-systems), demand response systems to enhance the flexibility of the systems (activating for instance electric vehicle charging stations and heat demand supplies), electric transportation systems like electrical vehicles or buses, heating system improvements using heat-pumps and integration of new renewable generation sources mainly in form of photo voltaics. The SERENE project will establish demonstrations in local villages in three European countries - Denmark, The Netherlands and Poland. The experiences gained at the demonstration sites will be analyzed and evaluated for replicability in firstly Europe but also world wide. Technical benchmark models and solutions will be set up together with their business models, and it is evaluated how different legal aspects form the involved countries will affect the possibility for replication. Further, the needed user involvement and their interest to join are evaluated seen from both geographic, social, environmental and economic conditions and characteristics.