VPP4Islands aims to facilitate the integration of renewable systems, accelerate the transition towards smart and green energy and help Islands to exploit energy efficiency potential and innovative storage approaches, foster the active participation of citizens and become self-sufficient in energy, while reducing costs, GHG emissions and reliance on heavy fuel oil to generate power, and creating new intelligent business, growth and local skilled jobs. To reach these goals, VPP4Islands project proposes disruptive solutions based on digital twin concept, Virtual energy storage systems (VESS) and Distributed Ledger technology (DLT) to revolutionize the existing VPP and build smart energy communities. Based on aggregation and smart management of distributed energy resources (DERs), VPP4Islands increases the flexibility and profitability of energy systems while providing novel services. VPP4Island will also enhance the Demand Response Capability of consumers by understating their behaviors and promoting self-consumption. In order to validate and evaluate the proposed solutions, two use cases in real-life with diverse assets in two leading islands are planned. The control and optimization of different systems will be extended to consider not only electrical, but also multi-energy vectors. Moreover, the qualified VPP4Islands solutions will be replicated in 3 follower islands, in order to generate and initiate smart sustainable energy plans. Also, VPP4Islands will generate durable social and environmental values for the benefit of consumers/prosumers. Finally, VPP4Islands project consortium is composed of 1 large company, 1 DSO, 7 SMEs, 3 universities, 2 RTOs, 3 islands municipalities, and 2 non-profits organisation.

The ECHO project seeks to establish Energy Community and innovative energy services Excellence Hubs in Türkiye, Greece, and Portugal. These hubs will accelerate the energy transition by fostering innovation ecosystems, building capacities, and empowering local stakeholders. Employing a quadruple helix model, the ECHO consortium engaged academia, industry, government, and civil society in a collaborative framework. To achieve this, ECHO will: - Create a networking platform for continuous stakeholder collaboration, enabling resource sharing, knowledge exchange, and the dissemination of best practices. - Implement an expert collaboration program, injecting cutting-edge knowledge and practices to enhance the project's R&I potential. - Deliver tailored training programs to develop hard and soft skills across the energy community value chain. - Establish diverse pilot projects demonstrating advanced energy services, technology transfer, and solutions to energy poverty. These pilots will emphasize either direct citizen ownership (Renewable/Citizen Energy Communities) or models where service providers own assets while upholding democratic principles and strong community engagement. ECHO's focus on sustainable, scalable, and inclusive Energy Communities aligns with EU energy transition goals. By bridging regional strengths and empowering stakeholders, ECHO will contribute significantly to a resilient and equitable energy landscape.

MASTERPIECE aims at creating a digital coordination and cooperation arena that will facilitate the creation and operation of energy communities throughout Europe. The facilities given to members of the community to contribute to services and other developments will represent the distinction of the solution offered in this proposal, making it participative-by-design. The project's objectives are: i) to develop technical and social innovations to empower traditional energy consumers and to make them active agents of collaborative energy communities, paving the way towards a new energy market paradigm; ii) to create user-centric solutions that are based on participatory approaches such as co-creation and naturally accelerate citizens’ involvement; iii) to propose new business strategies and incentive mechanisms that activate the reactions of market participants craving for business opportunities that imply energy use and cost reduction; iv) to configure a standardised and sound cyber-security infrastructure so the active citizens are protected against cyber-attacks, at the same time that privacy is defended in accordance with the revised EPBD and the GDPR law; and v) to demonstrate the applicability and replicability of methodological, technical and business innovations in a variety of real life pilots in different geographical locations, with heterogeneous social and economic environments and different regulatory/administrative frameworks. MASTERPIECE will follow a staged implementation approach, utilizing use cases with different maturity and TRLs. To demonstrate and evaluate the proposed innovations, it will leverage 4 pilot cases in different geographical areas and within different operational/policy frameworks (France, Italy, Sweden and Turkey).

DE-RISK aims at supporting the market uptake of renewable energy systems by fostering the adoption of LFMs and unlocking up to 100GW of flexibility in 2030 which will allow a safe and reliable integration of RES in the grid. DE-RISK will achieve this ambitious objective by minimizing the investments and implementation risk through an innovative customer behavior change journey that will increase end users' trust and willingness to participate in the flexibility markets. DE-RISK integrates building, citizen and grids digital twins in its flexibility platform capable of reducing the gap between simulation and real implementation thus mitigating potential technical risks during deployment and operational phase. To maximize DE-RISK impact, innovative multi-sided business models will be developed ensuring multi-benefits, fairness and sustainability for all actors while disruptive financial schemes will be validated for democratizing the access to sustainable investments. Finally, a set of experts will develop regulatory recommendations to support a fair, clear and transparent adoption of LFMs.