Four major Distribution System Operators (in Italy, France, Spain and Sweden) with smart metering infrastructure in place, associated with electricity retailers, aggregators, software providers, research organizations and one large consumer, propose five large-scale demonstrations to show that the deployment of novel services in the electricity retail markets (ranging from advanced monitoring to local energy control, and flexibility services) can be accelerated thanks to an open European Market Place for standardized interactions among all the electricity stakeholders, opening up the energy market also to new players at EU level. The proposed virtual environment will empower real customers with higher quality and quantity of information on their energy consumptions (and generation in case of prosumers), addressing more efficient energy behaviours and usage as through advanced energy monitoring and control services. Accessibility of metering data, close to real time, made available by DSOs in a standardized and non-discriminatory way to all the players of electricity retail markets (e.g. electricity retailers, aggregators, ESCOs and end consumers), will facilitate the emergence of new markets for energy services, enhancing competitiveness and encouraging the entry of new players, benefitting the customers. Economic models of these new services will be proposed and assessed. Based on the five demonstrations, while connecting with parallel projects funded at EU or national levels on novel services provision, the dissemination activities will support the preparation of the Market Place exploitation strategies, as well as the promotion of the use cases tested during the demonstration activities.

ASSIST is a 38 month European ‘market activation - policy orientation’ project to tackle fuel poverty and support vulnerable consumers. It answers the call requirements to actively engage consumers in the energy market and positively change behaviour in relation to energy consumption and to influence design of policy at all levels to tackle fuel poverty issues. Based on the conclusion of the “Energy Citizens’ Forum”, it combines activities that address both energy and social issues as fuel poverty is not only an energy issue nor can it be tackled in isolation of the bigger issue of poverty, it will: Broaden understanding on European fuel poverty incidence and how energy support services are effectively tackling the issue, identify best practice and needs but also provide a baseline against which the activity can be compared to demonstrate its effectiveness and to inform work towards policy orientation. Create an European network and build this by ensuring quality knowledge and skills of the Vulnerable Consumer Energy Advisors (VCEA) with a supportive infrastructure for professional development and experiencing sharing. The VCEA will be in positions of direct contact with the target group in order to help mainstream energy services and, increase access and uptake for the fuel poor. The creation of the VCEA network will also encompass the recruitment of persons with direct experience of vulnerability/fuel poverty, training them to increase their employability skills but, moreover, to maximise on the peer to peer benefits that they can offer in provision of advice . With specialist VCEA and advisory strategic steering committees each nation will undertake target actions to address the specific issue. In this way the action utilises the powerful effect of target group ownership of action + bespoke solutions designed in collaboration with the target groups/end users to deliver important lessons learned for dissemination and policy influence.

Efficient, reliable and sustainable delivery of energy is critical to the health and welfare of all people. Providing a low-carbon, climate resilient energy supply is a global challenge, which is even more demanding in remote areas. With increasing penetration of renewable energy resources (RES), and high expectations from end-users for energy reliability, connectivity and utilisation of available energy resources needs reconsideration. Thus, technologically smart and economically viable solutions for extending the lifetime of energy infrastructure will be in high demand. Incorporating more distributed RES and storage assets at the edges of the electricity grid, and optimally balancing these assets with other energy vectors, while extending the lifetime of current infrastructures will not only be economically viable, but at the same time decrease the level of carbonisation in local energy systems. E-LAND consortium believes that there are still major challenges in connection to technology, society and economics to overcome. In the E-LAND project, the main objective is to tackle these challenges and support the decarbonisation of energy islands by developing a E-LAND Toolbox for Multi-Energy Islands including tools and methods addressing the business, society and technology challenges. Project is going to implement the toolbox and demonstrate the viability and impact of the tools and methods created in 3 real life pilots in Europe and through simulations with 2 cases in India. Pilots have different geography, demography, sociography and maturity in terms of community and end-user activities, implementation of different energy vectors including storage, amount of renewables in the local energy mix and variety of loads that call for efficient and intelligent management system. To further expand the exploitation of E-LAND results, the Toolbox will be modular and the consortium will develop replication guidelines for utilising the tools in replication sites.