Significant improvements were made in creating relevant technical and scientific outputs, whether at component or system level.
Hardware – Equipment and components:
The project tested different storage solutions and improvements in different power electronic equipment namely on inverters, battery management systems, data concentrators and communication gateways. The grid and residential energy storage systems were tested firstly in a controlled environment in order to check all the performance and safety tests. After these tests the grid, residential and building equipment was installed in the final location and the performance and compliance of all the systems were successfully validated onsite.
Management systems:
The consortium evaluated the performance of the developed systems (load, generation and flexibility forecasts; steady state and emergency operation regime; grid optimization, market mechanisms; building energy consumption optimization) in the demonstration activities making use of real and real time data of the three tests beds. A cost/benefit analysis for each system were conducted and the understanding of the road-to-market of the different solutions was perfomed.
Energy services:
As output the project does not only provide energy storage systems (including associated components) and energy management tools (forecast to grid, flexibility and market management). The demonstration of the several use cases ended in exploitable services that can be provided by or to energy aggregators, retailers, ESCOs, DSOs and other important stakeholders in the energy sector.
The two key exploitable outcomes can be summarized as follows:
-Concepts for integration and management of electrical and thermal storages in buildings, communities and power networks.
-Concepts about the flexibility market. New services for retailer and end users to optimize their market participation.
The achieved results from the demonstration activities and exploitable systems/knowledge were disseminated in several forums during 2018, from the academy to communities and industry.
The dissemination activities aimed to target various audiences and establish and strengthen a strong project identity from which the technical progress and its process were visible to and understandable by those outside the community including participants.
The main public interface was the website for the project, which was regularly reviewed and updated with technical and other highlights, such as conference attendances, publications and other activities.
Several community engagement events have been organised in Nottingham and Evora to coincide with the demonstrators “going live” in 2018. In addition, a major stake-holder engagement event was held in Nottingham in October 2018 to promote findings from SENSIBLE with the participation of all partners. This was quickly followed by providing a stall at the European Utility Week in Vienna, in November 2018 to promote the SENSIBLE project findings as part of the wider portfolio of projects in energy storage and community energy funded through the EU.