Energy efficiency lies at the very core of policy interventions for energy security, energy poverty and climate change, while its promoted by technological innovations and investments. However, it seems that these technologies are not adopted by consumers at least to the extent that the assumption of rational behavior would predict. This energy efficiency gap, the difference between expected and realized energy consumption, costs to national economies both in terms of monetary values and emissions. Significant role in mitigating this issue is the exploration of the drivers of individual behavior. There is tremendous opportunity and need for policy-relevant research that utilizes randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental techniques to estimate the returns to energy efficiency investments and the adoption level of energy efficiency programs. EVIDENT proposes several different case studies under the framework of randomized control trials (RCTs) and surveys in order to define the main drivers of individuals’ decision making and to establish new relationships between energy consumption and other fields such as financial literacy. A large number of participants, well stratified samples, innovative design of experiments and state of-the-art econometric models that will be employed in EVIDENT and will contribute in robust estimates and subsequent policy measures for effective policy interventions.

PARITY addresses the “structural inertia” of existing distribution grids by delivering a transactive grid & market framework that will increase the durability and efficiency of the electrical grid and facilitate the penetration of RES beyond 50% of the generation mix in the distribution network. PARITY will go beyond the traditional “top-down” grid management practices by delivering a unique local flexibility market platform through the seamless integration of IoT and blockchain technologies. By delivering a market for automated flexibility exchange based on smart contracts & blockchain, PARITY will facilitate efficient and transparent local flexibility transactions and reward flexibility in a cost-reflective and symmetric manner, through price signals of higher spatio-temporal granularity based on real-time grid operational constraints and available DER flexibility. Secondly, by deploying State-of-the-Art IoT technologies PARITY will offer distributed intelligence (DER profiling) and self-learning/self-organization capabilities (automated real-time distributed control), orchestrated by the cost-reflective flexibility market signals generated by the blockchain market platform. Within PARITY, DERs will form dynamic clusters that essentially comprise self-organized networks of active DER nodes that will efficiently distribute and balance global and local intelligence, enabling real-time aggregated & P2P transactions through enhanced forecasting, optimization and control of DER flexibility. Finally, the PARITY solution includes novel tools for Active Network Management, including an innovative STATCOM and PQ monitoring device, that will enable the DSO to enhance its management capabilities, grid observability and RES hosting capacity. The PARITY solution will be demonstrated in 4 pilot sites around the EU (ES, CH, SE & ES) to validate its effectiveness across climatic, cultural and techno-regulatory conditions.

As we live in a data-driven era, the emergence of interdisciplinary, geographically dispersed, data repositories, is inevitable. The fact that these repositories do not necessarily abide with existing interdisciplinary data representation standards, nor do they necessarily belong to any data federation initiative, renders them unusable, since researchers cannot easily access this data. Moreover, most of the times, integrity, privacy, and security in such interactions is either very difficult, or impossible to maintain. Towards this end, TRUSTEE aims to bring a green, secure, trustworthy, and privacy-aware framework that will aggregate various interdisciplinary data repositories, such as Healthcare, Education, Energy, Space, Automotive, Cross-border etc. and also consider other European data federation spaces and trans-national initiatives, such as Gaia-X and EOSC. TRUSTEE will offer a secure-by-design framework, wherein stored data is homomorphically encrypted, thus offering researchers i) ability to search and use data in the encrypted domain, ii) a unified and meaningful FAIR representation of data, in an open and fair manner, iii) complex and context-aware queries through advanced ontologies, iv) data processing and analysis through transparent trustworthy ML workflows, over an intuitive AI playground, which will promote AI eXplainability, interoperability, and re-usability, by utilizing state of the art methods and paradigms, v) compliance with European privacy and ethical frameworks, e.g., GDPR, PIA, etc., vi) enforce privacy by applying a Homomorphic encryption layer, through which all data interaction will take place, vii) a blockchain-based transaction recorder to ensure accountability. TRUSTEE's fully encrypted solution will be validated through six different use cases supporting GAIA-X, EOSC, EGI, etc. demonstrating a multi-disciplinary, Pan-European federated FAIR and private data ecosystem.

The RESONANCE project develops an innovative software framework that provides means for rapid development and plug-and-play deployment of standard-compliant Customer Energy Manager (CEM), Resource Manager (RM), and their aggregation solutions. The CEM, specified in the EN 50491-12 standard family, is the next-generation demand-side flexibility management (DSFM) solution in Europe. CEM is a software agent that automates DSFM by interacting with smart appliances (represented by RMs), aggregators, and the markets to maximize customer benefits. According to the new EN 50491-12-2 standard, CEMs are envisioned to 1) provide a more deterministic demand response, and 2) be able to optimize consumer benefits with respect to multiple incentives and optimization targets. To achieve this, there is a need for accurate models of flexible assets (smart appliances) and model predictive control techniques to automate the decision-making within the customer premises. The RESONANCE Framework will facilitate the adoption of CEMs as the next generation DSFM system by significantly reducing the development efforts and costs. This is achieved with 1) a standard-compliant and modular system architecture, and 2) an innovative modeling pipeline that combines automated machine learning (AutoML) with physics-based modeling to provide accurate and robust models of flexible assets with minimum effort. The project brings together 19 partners (including a cluster with 40 organizations) with inter-disciplinary expertise and forms a basis for a cross-sector energy ecosystem that significantly contributes to the mobilization of DSFM at a large scale. Large scale piloting in six member states with a variety of consumer sectors, flexible assets (e.g. electric vehicles, HVAC systems, and white goods), stakeholders, and market settings (including sector integration with district heating) is utilized for demonstrating and validating the scalability and replication potential of the solutions.

Heat Pump and solar appliances are the most social accepted residential Renewable Energy based energy systems. SunHorizon will demonstrate up to TRL 7 innovative and reliable Heat Pump solutions (thermal compression, adsorption, reversible) that acting properly coupled and managed with advanced solar panels (PV, Hybrid, thermal) can provide heating and cooling to residential and tertiary building with lower emissions, energy bills and fossil fuel dependency. A Cloud based functional monitoring platform will be realised in the project to be the “performance data mine” for the development of Data Driven/KPI oriented optimized algorithms and tools to predict maintenance, optimize the management towards maximisation of solar exploitation and give to the manufacturer inputs for new installation design, via an innovative “robust design under uncertainty approach” which aims to overcome classical H&C equipment oversizing due to safety factors . This monitoring platform will also drive smart end user interfaces that will be applied at building level to collect thermal comfort data towards a new end-user driven H&C control system. SunHorizon tools will be applicable not only to proposed solar coupled HPs, but to all H&C appliances towards a global increasing efficiency of EU H&C stock and its decarbonisation. 5 low emission H&C Technology packages (TPs) will be tested coupling HP and solar installation. SunHorizon aims to be a breakthrough demonstration to market project involving 21 partners and 8 demosites all around EU focusing its activities on “reducing system costs and improving performance as well as optimising existing technologies for H&C applications”. SunHorizon will be focused on three main research pillars interacting each other towards project objectives achievement, demonstration and replication: i) OPTIMIZED DESIGN, ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING OF SUNHORIZON TECHNOLOGIES ii) SMART FUNCTIONAL MONITORING FOR H&C,iii) KPI DRIVEN MANAGEMENT AND DEMONSTRATION.