FEDErated -system of systems- approach for flexible and interoperable energy COMmunities

Project Information

FEDECOM

Grant agreement ID: 101075660

DOI

10.3030/101075660

EC signature date 23 August 2022

Start date 1 October 2022

End date 30 September 2026

Funded under

• Climate, Energy and Mobility

Total cost

€ 9 474 375,00

EU contribution

€ 7 635 000,00

Coordinated by

GIROA SOCIEDAD ANONIMA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FEDECOM (FEDErated -system of systems- approach for flexible and interoperable energy COMmunities)

Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

To solve the issue of intermittency and grid operation inestability caused by RES, FEDECOM proposes sector coupling and cross-energy vector integration through a cloud-based platform that will offer optimisation services for planning, supervision and control of integrated local energy systems. To validate the viability of this solution, three real large-scale pilots, each composed of multiple (federated) demo sites (communities) will be deployed: Spanish Virtual Green H2 Federation, Swiss Residential Hydropower Federation and BENElux cross-country e-Mobility Federation. These sites were chosen at different geographical locations and climate zones, with different energy systems and energy requirements, spanning across residential, commercial, tertiary and industrial sectors, thus providing a diversity of power-to-X opportunities (e.g. P2Gas, P2Heat, P2Hydro). Furthermore, different actors/end users such as aggregators, utilities, ESCOs or DSOs will be engaged across pilots in service provision and cross-sector aggregation.
This will be achieved by meeting the following main objectives, setting the conditions for wide-scale replicability across energy communities of Europe:
• Integrate existing and emerging ICT tools to deploy FEDECOM cloud-based solution enabling integrated, reliable and decarbonized energy systems based on sector coupling, distributed generation and storage, high demand flexibility services, while improving RES hosting capacity towards 40% share targets.
• Validate the FEDECOM solution in 3 large-scale pilots across Europe in different technical, market and climate contexts, while demonstrating improved grid resilience owing to the cross-energy vector integration and optimised operations of local energy systems, while unlocking at least 30% of demand side flexibility.
• Develop partner-backed viable plans for the large-scale replication of the FEDECOM solution to 3 “follower” communities, which measure positive impact on wider energy infrastructure, environment, local economy and social aspects owing to sector coupling, increased share of RES and improved grid operation.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project activities performed and achievements in the first reporting period (M1-M18) can be summarised as follows:

Under WP1:
● Successful coordination of the partners to submit deliverables on time with double quality review.
● Successful delivery of deliverables: D1.1 D1.4 D1.8 and D1.9.
● Kick-off meetings in addition to 2 General Assembly meetings (in M7 and M13) to review the project progress.
● Monitoring the use of resources and expenditures from all partners with periodic financial reports per semester.
● Management of the administrative/financial problems occurred during the course of the project.
● Preparation of the first Grant Agreement amendment to address several partners requests.
● Handling of legal issues: co-responsibility agreement for the treatment of personal information drafted.

Under WP2:
● Technical characterisation of different sites within the three Pilots.
● Demo scenarios specified.
● Functional and technical requirements specified.
● Project KPIs defined.

Under WP3:
● Processed 70% of the data provided by the pilot sites.
● Established global (country-level) and local (community-level) scenarios, along with accompanying storylines and sensitivities.
● Techno-economic assessment of transition scenarios at the national level and for most pilot sites.

Under WP4:
● Development of Forecasting Algorithms.
● Energy Asset Modelling.
● Optimised Control Systems.
● Integrative Optimisation Techniques.
● Grid Flexibility and Optimisation.
● Predictive Grid State Estimation.
● Collaborative Efforts and Technological Integration.

Under WP5:
● Analysis of integration constraints of the pilots and available data sources and their interfaces. Setup of Virtual Machines which will host the FEDECOM platform.
● Drafting of ICT architecture and alignment with T5.1 and T5.3. Implementation of middleware to fetch metre data from pilot 2.
● Gathering and alignment of all requirements from developers towards the ontology/FEDECOM platform. Generated competency questions and identified terms to be included in the ontology.
● Started analysis of the threat model which will help to assess potential risks, vulnerabilities, and security challenges that could compromise the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of the system.

Under WP6:
●Requirements analysis on core platform, market and regulatory analysis on trading for Flanders and the Netherlands.
● API implementation services exposing results from (future) community trading as well as measured grid data.
● Implementation of the Digital twin ontology and data transfer object structure for API communication.
● Implementation of algorithms for intra-community exchange and performed feasibility study, as well as for energy/cost savings calculation.
● Development of a decentralised energy exchange component and publication of the source code under open source GPL v.3 licence via GitHub.

Under WP7:
● Pilot site deployment plans have been produced.

Under WP8:
The main achievements have been related to setting the underlying frameworks underpinning dissemination (D8.1) exploitation management (D8.2) and market entry (D8.4). Each of these frameworks will continue to be relied upon for ongoing work across all Tasks within WP8 and additional Tasks in related WPs. Furthermore, another significant result is being formulated in the two market adoption Tasks (i.e. T8.3 for business models and T8.4 for replication) due to the support of Horizon Results Booster’s Business Plan Development service.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

During the first reporting period, FEDECOM has contributed towards the achievement of the project main five expected outcomes (EO) by:

EO1: Demonstrated benefits of sector integration in different geographic, climate and economic conditions
- The definition of the sector coupling approach within FEDECOM.
- The creation of the technical architecture for the FEDECOM blockchain-based marketplace.
- The completion of the pilot sites’ deployment plan.

EO2: Improved planning of integration of power, heat, gas, industry with a production site(s) of renewable energy
- The development of a cross-vector energy dispatch model.
- The evaluation of RES integration and sector coupling potential in FEDECOM pilot sites.
- The building of a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) for LCA.

EO3: Optimised operations of coupled networks (e.g. electricity vs. heating)
- The preliminary design of the Model Predictive Control (MPC).
- The launch of an optimisation service based on FEDECOM Pilot 1.
- The work on other optimisation tools to improve grid stability and flexibility.

EO4: Validated tools and platforms enabling effective sector coupling as tested in large demonstration projects
- All the activities related to the FEDECOM platform integration.
-The organisation of two different workshops for the definition of FEDECOM business models.
-The starting of the search for potential follower communities to join the FEDECOM platform.

EO5: Consolidated methodology to evaluate the impacts on OPEX, CAPEX and overall value creation connected to the integration of flexibility from storage and other energy flexibility solutions
- The initiation of the LCC assessment.
- The progress on the multi-criteria decision support for optimal system configuration selection (MCDA).