Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ENPOWER (Energy Activated Citizens and Data-Driven Energy-Secure Communities for a Consumer-Centric Energy System)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-09-01 al 2025-02-28
In response to the recent crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Union has reinforced its commitment to energy independence and sustainability through policy initiatives like REPowerEU and the European Green Deal. These efforts aim to accelerate the energy transition by increasing energy efficiency and renewable energy deployment, while also ensuring affordability and security of supply. However, the transition remains hindered by persistent social, technological, and business-related barriers.
Citizens often lack the knowledge and tools to understand how energy systems work, what role they can play, and how they can benefit from participation. This low level of energy literacy, combined with ineffective incentive schemes and limited citizen engagement, prevents widespread adoption of energy citizenship practices. Traditional business models fail to reward active consumer behaviours or value non-financial community benefits such as social cohesion or environmental impact. On the technological front, the absence of real-time, interoperable digital tools and the limited culture of energy data sharing hinder the deployment of advanced, consumer-centric services. Closed-loop tools enabling management of self-consumption, flexibility, and shared resources at individual and community level remain underdeveloped. Finally, regulatory and market frameworks have yet to integrate emerging actors such as energy communities and consumer aggregators in a cost-effective and scalable way.
To address these needs, ENPOWER develops and demonstrates an integrated framework of methodologies, tools, and services that enable consumer activation and support the establishment of data-driven, energy-secure communities across sectors. Social science methodologies guide citizen engagement strategies and the design of incentive mechanisms that reflect both financial and social value. Artificial intelligence is used to segment consumers and personalise participation pathways. Interactive planning tools facilitate community development, while Energy Data Space-compliant solutions ensure secure and interoperable data exchange. Closed-loop applications and digital twins support real-time feedback, self-consumption optimisation, and flexibility trading. A tokenised blockchain marketplace enables value exchange among community members. The project also creates a Business Sandbox to design, test and validate innovative models rooted in social innovation and shared ownership. These developments are validated in four Front Runner pilot communities and replicated in two Early Adopters, covering diverse maturity levels, with the aim of increasing renewable self-consumption, citizen participation, and local energy resilience. The ENPOWER Leadership Programme and policy blueprints will ensure broader replication across the EU and provide guidance for enabling regulatory environments.
Citizens often lack the knowledge and tools to understand how energy systems work, what role they can play, and how they can benefit from participation. This low level of energy literacy, combined with ineffective incentive schemes and limited citizen engagement, prevents widespread adoption of energy citizenship practices. Traditional business models fail to reward active consumer behaviours or value non-financial community benefits such as social cohesion or environmental impact. On the technological front, the absence of real-time, interoperable digital tools and the limited culture of energy data sharing hinder the deployment of advanced, consumer-centric services. Closed-loop tools enabling management of self-consumption, flexibility, and shared resources at individual and community level remain underdeveloped. Finally, regulatory and market frameworks have yet to integrate emerging actors such as energy communities and consumer aggregators in a cost-effective and scalable way.
To address these needs, ENPOWER develops and demonstrates an integrated framework of methodologies, tools, and services that enable consumer activation and support the establishment of data-driven, energy-secure communities across sectors. Social science methodologies guide citizen engagement strategies and the design of incentive mechanisms that reflect both financial and social value. Artificial intelligence is used to segment consumers and personalise participation pathways. Interactive planning tools facilitate community development, while Energy Data Space-compliant solutions ensure secure and interoperable data exchange. Closed-loop applications and digital twins support real-time feedback, self-consumption optimisation, and flexibility trading. A tokenised blockchain marketplace enables value exchange among community members. The project also creates a Business Sandbox to design, test and validate innovative models rooted in social innovation and shared ownership. These developments are validated in four Front Runner pilot communities and replicated in two Early Adopters, covering diverse maturity levels, with the aim of increasing renewable self-consumption, citizen participation, and local energy resilience. The ENPOWER Leadership Programme and policy blueprints will ensure broader replication across the EU and provide guidance for enabling regulatory environments.
The ENPOWER project has made significant progress in promoting consumer-centric energy systems through a multidisciplinary approach that combines social sciences, innovative technologies, and real-world applications.
A Social Science Framework was established, including consumer-centric energy markets and regulatory aspects. This was achieved through extensive gap analyses, leveraging existing use cases, and fostering strong community engagement. Activities included deliberative workshops, co-creation sessions, and questionnaires aimed at integrating citizen perspectives into energy system design.In parallel, a Business Sandbox was developed to support the creation of innovative and easily adoptable frameworks for energy communities. This sandbox emphasizes shared decision-making and social innovation, providing a structured environment for testing and adapting business models.
A comprehensive Decision Support Tool is under development to support energy community planning. This tool offers two distinct views—citizen and stakeholder—and integrates a modular set of services that can be combined to evaluate different community configurations and scenarios. Its three core modules include: a sizing module for electrical assets (e.g. PV panels, batteries), optimizing configuration based on consumption profiles and other influencing assets such as thermal storage, an optimization module for thermal networks and heating/cooling systems, leveraging digitalization to exploit system flexibilities, a KPI module to assess the technical and social performance of the proposed community scenarios.
To ensure secure and compliant data handling, a GDPR-compliant blockchain-based consent mechanism was implemented, with identity and access management managed through Keycloak using standard protocols (OAuth2, UMA2, OpenID Connect). An API Gateway provides fine-grained access control and full traceability. AI legal compliance is also under assessment. To address interoperability, SEMAPTIC, a lightweight framework for semantic metadata tagging, is under development. Additionally, a first version of the ENPOWER Reference Architecture, aligned with the Smart Grid Architecture Model (SGAM), was defined. This architecture builds on frameworks like IDSA, GAIA-X, and OneNET, enabling secure and interoperable data flows across pilot sites. A blockchain-based energy marketplace was deployed on Ethereum, with smart contracts supporting wallet provisioning and trading via ERC721-based FlexibilityTokens. The system also includes robust identity management and scalable market session deployment.
Technical innovations also include digital twins for devices such as heat pumps and water heaters, improved consumer clustering methods, and enhanced flexibility assessments—all integrated into a personalized energy management framework. To optimize renewable self-consumption, new tools for load control, AI-driven household energy management, and electric vehicle (EV) flexibility were developed. Community-level trading and self-consumption capabilities were also improved. Progress was made in hybrid community flexibility aggregation, enhancing blockchain-based marketplaces, peer-to-peer trading platforms, and privacy-preserving trading algorithms. The Universal Security Gateway (USG) was upgraded for scalable, secure management of distributed energy resources (DERs), with advanced control algorithms tested in real-world pilot sites. To evaluate impact, an implementation plan and evaluation methodology were developed. This includes baseline analysis and metrics to assess the technological feasibility, user engagement, economic viability, and environmental benefits of the ENPOWER solutions.
Finally, the ENPOWER Playbook was created, providing practical guidance for stakeholders—such as existing Energy Communities, ESCOs, and local authorities—on establishing and replicating energy-secure community models. The project's findings have already contributed to 3 scientific publications and 4 are under review.
A Social Science Framework was established, including consumer-centric energy markets and regulatory aspects. This was achieved through extensive gap analyses, leveraging existing use cases, and fostering strong community engagement. Activities included deliberative workshops, co-creation sessions, and questionnaires aimed at integrating citizen perspectives into energy system design.In parallel, a Business Sandbox was developed to support the creation of innovative and easily adoptable frameworks for energy communities. This sandbox emphasizes shared decision-making and social innovation, providing a structured environment for testing and adapting business models.
A comprehensive Decision Support Tool is under development to support energy community planning. This tool offers two distinct views—citizen and stakeholder—and integrates a modular set of services that can be combined to evaluate different community configurations and scenarios. Its three core modules include: a sizing module for electrical assets (e.g. PV panels, batteries), optimizing configuration based on consumption profiles and other influencing assets such as thermal storage, an optimization module for thermal networks and heating/cooling systems, leveraging digitalization to exploit system flexibilities, a KPI module to assess the technical and social performance of the proposed community scenarios.
To ensure secure and compliant data handling, a GDPR-compliant blockchain-based consent mechanism was implemented, with identity and access management managed through Keycloak using standard protocols (OAuth2, UMA2, OpenID Connect). An API Gateway provides fine-grained access control and full traceability. AI legal compliance is also under assessment. To address interoperability, SEMAPTIC, a lightweight framework for semantic metadata tagging, is under development. Additionally, a first version of the ENPOWER Reference Architecture, aligned with the Smart Grid Architecture Model (SGAM), was defined. This architecture builds on frameworks like IDSA, GAIA-X, and OneNET, enabling secure and interoperable data flows across pilot sites. A blockchain-based energy marketplace was deployed on Ethereum, with smart contracts supporting wallet provisioning and trading via ERC721-based FlexibilityTokens. The system also includes robust identity management and scalable market session deployment.
Technical innovations also include digital twins for devices such as heat pumps and water heaters, improved consumer clustering methods, and enhanced flexibility assessments—all integrated into a personalized energy management framework. To optimize renewable self-consumption, new tools for load control, AI-driven household energy management, and electric vehicle (EV) flexibility were developed. Community-level trading and self-consumption capabilities were also improved. Progress was made in hybrid community flexibility aggregation, enhancing blockchain-based marketplaces, peer-to-peer trading platforms, and privacy-preserving trading algorithms. The Universal Security Gateway (USG) was upgraded for scalable, secure management of distributed energy resources (DERs), with advanced control algorithms tested in real-world pilot sites. To evaluate impact, an implementation plan and evaluation methodology were developed. This includes baseline analysis and metrics to assess the technological feasibility, user engagement, economic viability, and environmental benefits of the ENPOWER solutions.
Finally, the ENPOWER Playbook was created, providing practical guidance for stakeholders—such as existing Energy Communities, ESCOs, and local authorities—on establishing and replicating energy-secure community models. The project's findings have already contributed to 3 scientific publications and 4 are under review.
The exploitation plan for the ENPOWER approach will be fully developed in the second reporting period.