NOBEL GRID will develop, deploy and evaluate advanced tools and ICT services for energy DSOs cooperatives and medium-size retailers, enabling active consumers involvement –i.e. new demand response schemas – and flexibility of the market – i.e. new business models for aggregators and ESCOs. Through the dual-use of telecommunication networks, and validating the integration of renewable generation presence and demand response systems, NOBEL GRID will offer advanced services to all actors in the retail markets of the electricity system in order to ensure that all consumers will benefit from cheaper prices, more secure and stable grids and low carbon electricity supply. The project results will be demonstrated and validated in real world environments with active involvement of all the actors, and based on the new business models defined during the project.

By 2050, 98 million Europeans could become prosumers by joining an energy community. The REScoopVPP project combines front-runner energy communities to create the most advanced community-driven smart building ecosystem for energy communities. The ecosystem consists of a Community-driven Flexibility Box (COFY-Box) acting as smart home controller, and a set of community tools to support energy services for aggregators, ESCO’s, BRP’s and suppliers of RES. The COFY-box will be the first truly open and collaborative building controller, based on existing open source home automation technology with more than 1.400 integrations. The COFY-box will be affordable and easy to install. Community tools will enable energy communities to become real-time asset operators by employing demand and production forecasting algorithms, a dynamic pricing module for implicit DR and an OpenADR-based explicit DR solution. REScoopVPP solutions will undergo a large-scale experimentation in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and the UK. The project will improve EV, PV and electric battery control, and will especially focus on the intelligent integration of thermal storage and hybrid heating solutions, capable of shifting fossil fuel consumption from legacy DHW and heating equipment to flexible renewable heat. Further attention will be given to smart plug control and the integration of equipment based on emerging EU-standards. This will improve comfort, while not adversely affecting original functionalities, quality and lifetime of the equipment. The ecosystem of REScoopVPP has the potential to impact 375.000 customers 5 years after the project and thus trigger primary energy savings of 559 GWh/year and improve the SRI of houses by 2 steps on average. To make sure that the ecosystem is viable, REScoopVPP will establish a dedicated legal entity that can bring solutions to the market and provide citizens with a European, community-driven alternative.

mPOWER will enable in-depth, wide-scale and systematic peer-to-peer learning programme between at least 100 local public authorities with a view to replicate innovative best practice in municipal energy. European cities, particularly in Germany, Denmark and France, are municipal energy innovators running distribution networks, supply companies, renewable generation, citizen participation processes and finance for energy projects. Other cities across Europe are investigating their options for municipal energy and are looking to learn. mPOWER will map existing municipal energy policy and identify innovations, best practice, as well as obstacles and barriers. The action will enable participant authorities across Europe to (a) learn from replicable best practices, (b) recognise risks, obstacles and blockages, (c) identify and commit to replication pathways that best suit local needs, (d) incubate at least 30 new and improved municipal energy policies and projects within the project duration. Lessons learnt will be disseminated publicly and through target networks in easily accessible format for replication. 30 cities and city networks from 14 Member States have already expressed interest in participating. An estimated 3.9GWh/year can be saved and 40.8GWh/year renewable capacity installed through replicating practices between participant cities within the action (respectively 9.8GWh/year and 108.8 GWh/year within three years of project end). This can be scaled up around Europe through wider replication, promoted by Energy Cities and partners beyond the project’s lifetime. mPOWER’s project consortium brings access to an active network of cities committed to energy transition (Energy Cities, IPE), experience in energy policy (Platform, Energy Cities, IPE) and energy innovation (Carbon Coop), public services experts (UGLA, Basque University, TNI), and years of innovative peer-learning projects (Platform, TNI, IPE).