Fast and versatile real-time balancing of electricity demand flexibility: shaping a clean and levelled power grid in Europe

Project Information

Flex4Scale

Grant agreement ID: 190156971

DOI

10.3030/190156971

Project closed

EC signature date 27 July 2022

Start date 1 May 2022

End date 30 April 2024

Funded under

• The European Innovation Council (EIC)

Total cost

€ 3 295 105,00

EU contribution

€ 2 306 573,50

Coordinated by

SYMPOWER BV
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Flex4Scale (Fast and versatile real-time balancing of electricity demand flexibility: shaping a clean and levelled power grid in Europe)

Reporting period: 2023-05-01 to 2024-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Flex4Scale will support Sympower in expanding the types of Demand Side Flexibility (DSF) resources that can be connected to its platform and thus, unlock the flexibility potential of new segments. Up until now, most Flexibility Services Providers have focused on unlocking the flexibility of commercial and industrial customers, as these typically own larger flexible resources that can provide more value to the system. Lower-powered flexible resources such as electric vehicles’ charging stations or rooftop photovoltaic (PV) installations, are trickier to unlock as they require cost-effective and scalable solutions that can unlock their flexibility in a profitable manner.
For this, part of Flex4Scale's innovation will lie on building a modular cloud-based intelligent platform that can unlock the demand-side flexibility of low-powered resources for real-time aggregation. The project will also be key for the growth of Sympower in the next few years, expanding its presents to more market programs, countries and resource verticals.
The impact of unlocking new types of flexibility resources will be very significant for Sympower, which is planning to unlock more than 10GW of flexible resources by 2030, but also for the overall European electricity system. On the one hand, a higher share of DSF resources in the system will reduce the costs of electricity, the amount of renewable energy curtailed, the “lost load” not served by available generation as well as the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. On the other hand, more DSF will lead to more security of supply, as it will contribute to fulfilling the lack of generation capacity expected in our energy system by 2030.

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

WP1 focused on setting up the right processes within Sympower, on the technical front but also on the administrative front. More than 40 employees have contributed to the execution of the different technical tasks and many more have contributed towards its successful completion. Additionally, several communication activities have been carried out to share the results achieved by the Flex4Scale project publicly.
WP2 revolved around demonstrating the modular platform through some concrete projects in 3 countries. Throughout the duration of the project, 3 demonstration projects were developed and successfully connected to the market, depicting a variety of customer types and resources, demonstrating the value of the developed modular platform in practice.
WP3 focused on the different technical tasks required to develop a modular and intelligent platform, which was a significant endeavor by Sympower’s product and engineering team. A modular platform has been developed, including different aspects such as machine learning functionality, robust security features as well as dashboards and quality assurance strategies.
WP4 was focused on two main points. On one hand, defining and qualifying the market fit of new resources and, on the other hand, developing an exploitation plan for Sympower’s scale up phase moving forward. Under this WP, different verticals where deeply explored (e-boilers, EV chargers, energy storage) to develop a solid understanding on new strategic avenues of growth for Sympower. Additionally, the team developed a framework around expansion to guide Sympower’s growth in the different potential European markets.

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)

Flex4Scale has achieved different results beyond what could be considered “the state of the art” in different areas:
1. Development of a modular and cloud-based platform: the successful completion of the scope foreseen for WP3, has allowed Sympower to develop a modular platform based on a micro service architecture.
- Potential impact: with the achieved results, we have showcased that the same functionalities of the platform can be used in different countries.
- Key needs in the future: as flexibility markets and their regulation continue to develop within Europe, the modularity of Sympower’s platform will continuously test its ability to scale efficiently and most likely require further developments and adaptations.
2. Self-service data analytics portal: WP3 also included an extensive task around developing more self-service data analytics tools that would allow different types of users to get an overview of the state of the different resources at any time.
- Potential impact: key to building trust with Sympower’s services and flexibility markets, and also providing actionable information for the company's stakeholder to act upon any relevant insights in order to improve their performance.
- Key needs in the future: as Sympower continues on it’s scale up phase, incorporating more employees, customers and stakeholders, we expect the data needs to increase in order to satisfy expectations of the different actors involved throughout the process.
3. Platform for unlocking new types of flexibility assets: as Sympower grows, connection to flex resources also grows in its complexity, as the company integrates new types of resources, customers and partners . Sympower’s new modular platform has been designed with the aim to ensure its modularity, with internal components but also with external parties.
- Potential impact: the growth of Sympower will be directly tied to its ability to incorporate new customers and resources in an efficient manner.
- Key needs in the future: connecting to new types of resources will always require some personalized work from Sympower’s technical team.
4. Platform optimized for big data analytics: Flex4Scale has placed a strong focus on the development of data capabilities of its platform, by applying Machine Learning functionality to different elements such as flex availability forecasts, price forecasts, among others.
- Potential impact: growing the technical capabilities of the platform as well as optimizing some of the recurring activities of Sympower's operations and trading team.
- Key needs in the future: the future development of Sympower’s product will and should be strongly driven by advanced data analytics.

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