Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NEON (Next-Generation Integrated Energy Services fOr Citizen Energy CommuNities)
Período documentado: 2021-09-01 hasta 2022-11-30
We are all witnesses of increased energy consumption and power grid operation vulnerability as contemporary problems worldwide. The large intermittent power flows from renewables put a strain on the power grid, thus making it more challenging to ensure that electricity supply matches demand. For solving such problems, we are in a need for effective energy service concepts, capable of enabling the energy efficiency and flexibility resources at the demand side, which is still largely untapped. To fully exploit the energy efficiency concepts already available at the market, and unlock the flexibility potential under demand response services, it is necessary to ensure cutting-edge control capabilities across building systems and energy assets in an integrative manner. For improved viability of the service offer, it is necessary to enable the cross-sectoral business models that deliver benefits along the energy value chain. The centralised approach traditionally followed in energy systems becomes impractical in this regard, due to lack of scalability, privacy and capability of dealing with the multi-actor aspect of the problem. This calls for new energy services and business concepts to ensure effective integration of this locked efficiency and flexibility at demand-side into the power system. While building on results of recently (or soon to be) concluded EU projects, NEON aims to undertake coordination and support activities to advance the leveraging technologies and concepts in order to deliver the next-generation integrated energy services for communities, either as single or multiple buildings, targeted to enhance the quality of life of European citizens, while improving the performance of energy system at the same time. In this endeavour, NEON will exploit building energy efficiency, renewable energy generation and storage, and demand flexibility to increase energy savings, reduce CO2 emissions, and provide cost savings across sectors. For such services to become a reality, NEON intends to engage grid stakeholders, service providers and final consumers to establish, in a co-creation process, the cross-sectoral arrangements and underlying service concepts. Under the context introduced by Directive (EU) 2019/944, the concept of Citizen Energy Communities (CECs) will be leveraged to set the legal and business foundations to enable faster uptake of the proposed services, and facilitate European communities, both residential and non-residential, in becoming energy-efficient.
In the first year of the NEON project, the consortium completed a detailed analysis of the components / services available for use in the NEON project and mapped them to the interoperability layers defined in SGAM: (1) Business Layer (Applications & Dashboards); (2)Function Layer (composed of components and services described in detail in Annex 1), (3) Information Layer (information used and exchanged between functions, services, and components, for more details see Annex 1),(4)Communication Layer (protocols and mechanisms for the interoperable exchange of information between components in the context of the underlying use case, function or service and related information objects or data models, (4) Component Layer - is the physical distribution of all participating components in the smart grid context.
NEON’s partners carried out and described an analysis of the regulatory, legal, and financial context, at European and national level, affecting core project’s activities. In the context outlined, an evaluation of actual and potential financing schemes as well as of the most suitable and effective contracting schemes and financing mechanisms for integrated energy services in CECs were conducted. The analysis carried out by the partners involved led the workflow towards feasible instruments and KPIs to assess the success of future energy communities in NEON.
An analysis of the European and National (Italy, France, Spain) regulatory framework (related to energy efficiency and integrated energy services) has been conducted. In addition, an evaluation of actual and potential financing schemes, as well as financial and technical barriers for NEON, was carried out and implemented after the request of in-depth analysis by the Project Officer. An evaluation of the existing EPC and P4P schemes was performed, gaps between the energy communities’ requirements and typical contracting schemas were evaluated and based on those gaps and the CECs requirements, a methodology with guidelines and steps for the implementation of the contracting schemes to be applied at the community level were described. Furthermore, the workflow dedicated to identify service financial structure suitable for business risk minimization and distribution was divided between desk analysis conducted by involved partners and an evaluation of shared experiences, best practices, and key challenges in creating and developing renewable energy communities, with a focus on the economic sustainability of projects and financial solutions adopted to support building energy efficiency, renewable energy, and digital innovation.
NEON’s partners carried out and described an analysis of the regulatory, legal, and financial context, at European and national level, affecting core project’s activities. In the context outlined, an evaluation of actual and potential financing schemes as well as of the most suitable and effective contracting schemes and financing mechanisms for integrated energy services in CECs were conducted. The analysis carried out by the partners involved led the workflow towards feasible instruments and KPIs to assess the success of future energy communities in NEON.
An analysis of the European and National (Italy, France, Spain) regulatory framework (related to energy efficiency and integrated energy services) has been conducted. In addition, an evaluation of actual and potential financing schemes, as well as financial and technical barriers for NEON, was carried out and implemented after the request of in-depth analysis by the Project Officer. An evaluation of the existing EPC and P4P schemes was performed, gaps between the energy communities’ requirements and typical contracting schemas were evaluated and based on those gaps and the CECs requirements, a methodology with guidelines and steps for the implementation of the contracting schemes to be applied at the community level were described. Furthermore, the workflow dedicated to identify service financial structure suitable for business risk minimization and distribution was divided between desk analysis conducted by involved partners and an evaluation of shared experiences, best practices, and key challenges in creating and developing renewable energy communities, with a focus on the economic sustainability of projects and financial solutions adopted to support building energy efficiency, renewable energy, and digital innovation.
The report related to D2.2 identifies the most appropriate contracting models for each of NEON’s CECs application case, for their deployment in case of multi-actor and multi-sector contractual arrangements. This work considers contracting between service providers and consumers, integration with performance schemes aimed at both service providers (e.g. between service providers and consumers), and integration with performance schemes aimed at both service providers (e.g. between utilities and aggregators) and consumers. Based on the requirements identified within each of the NEON project CECs, adaptations and guidelines have been prepared and offered for improving the implementation of the EPC models combined to P4P mechanisms, and thus ensuring a successful implementation of additional energy efficiency services projects within the four NEON project’s pilots.
Along with the cross-service integration, NEON will join energy and non-energy benefits under the “user in the loop” approach, while ensuring that comfort, health, and safety requirements of the building occupants are maintained. Provision of non-energy benefits will be enabled through automated control of building systems (e.g. thermal valves, HVAC, smart appliances), as well as in interaction with building occupants by providing recommendations for manual intervention (e.g. sing the window) or acquiring the user feedback (e.g. about indoor climate).
Along with the cross-service integration, NEON will join energy and non-energy benefits under the “user in the loop” approach, while ensuring that comfort, health, and safety requirements of the building occupants are maintained. Provision of non-energy benefits will be enabled through automated control of building systems (e.g. thermal valves, HVAC, smart appliances), as well as in interaction with building occupants by providing recommendations for manual intervention (e.g. sing the window) or acquiring the user feedback (e.g. about indoor climate).