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Energy and economic efficiency for today’s smart communities through integrated multi storage technologies

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - NETFFICIENT (Energy and economic efficiency for today’s smart communities through integrated multi storage technologies)

Reporting period: 2018-01-01 to 2018-12-31

NETfficient has tackled one of the most pressing challenges of the energy market, as the availability of renewable energies is not considered the sole problem, but its storage and distribution methods due to the time-shift between availability of renewable resources and demand peaks. The project deployed and demonstrated local storage technologies as well as developed the necessary ICT tools (Energy Management Platform, EMP from now on) in order to exploit the synergies between energy storage solutions, smart grid and citizens. The demonstration in the real environment on the German island of Borkum in the North Sea has been driven by five use cases covering a wide range of applications and functionalities including low voltage and medium voltage scenarios.

By focusing on renewable energy sources to feed the energy demand on the island, the project has helped to reduce carbon emissions as well as the dependency on fossil fuels, empowering households, districts and citizens to adopt a sustainable and clean energy supply. The Island of Borkum has been aided so as to it can further realise its goal to become energy autarkic.

During last reporting period, the pilot phase of NETfficient Project has been carried out. Several storage technologies have been tested and operated thanks to the Energy Management Platform, that is designed to operate the DERs in order to maximize profit.

It is necessary to take into account that current social awareness of the (potential) role of local/small storage systems en Europe is poor, leading to a lack of self-identification by a broad public. Focussed market introduction programs with adequate monitoring and PR measures would be a good way to overcome this problem. Simplification of regulatory and technical requirements and solutions for the clustering and pooling of local storage systems could significantly lower the barriers for providing collective services for markets and the grid. A technical standardisation of “flexibility” could help in this process.

NETfficient partners have defined and described feasible and viable business models, as a basis for defining business strategic guidelines for a future market integration of the pool of technologies for new energy services and products developed during the NETfficient project real operation in the island of Borkum. The strategic guidelines defined in the business model canvases will help to deal with a future market integration and uptake of local and small storage systems. Even if considering the ongoing evolution and transformation of energy sector, the current european countries regulation problems and social acceptance of storage systems, all stakeholders should be aware and ready to adapt the best strategy for market uptake and be able to move forward in this context.

NETfficient has analyzed and described a business model plan for an ESCO. Financial aspects have been analyzed, as well as issues related to customers. Main risks have been identified, and it has been concluded that , with a well balanced portfolio of different customers and services the ESCO can cope with those risks.
During the first phase of the project (M1-M18), most of the technical activities conducted aimed at definin and setting up the framework and foundation of the solution at different levels (electrical, software, etc.). This enabled the integration of all the components in an optimized and feasible way: Storage technologies (Hybrid Energy Storage System, Li-ion batteries, Second Life Electric Vehicle Batteries, Super capacitor + Li-ion batteries), inverters, smart-meters, renewable generators, monitoring and controlling systems, energy software management platform and so on, ranging from MV to LV.

During the period from M19 to M36 all partners worked in the stablished tasks, focusing the main efforts towards the pilot to be started in beginning of 2018 in Borkum. Namely, there have been two big paths connected and addressed in this period: validation tests from all partners and deployemnt works in the island.

During last reporting period from M37 to M48, the pilot phase of NETfficient Project has been carried out. Several storage technologies have been tested and operated thanks to the Energy Management Platform, that is designed to operate the DERs in order to maximize profit. At MV level, the HESS provided ancilliary services to the grid. At the LV, stand-alone systems demonstrated to be a success and aggregated systems could be operated in a satisfactory way in order to gather data and knowledge.

The project encompassed an ongoing roadmapping process to gear partners up for effective exploitation of project results. Tasks relating to the development of business models and a business plan were designed to make opportunities for exploitation more tangible. As part of the business plan, an extensive study of revenue potentials was performed, which analysed applications for aggregated storage and quantified related revenue potentials.

The project was highly successful in terms of dissemination activities, exceeding targets by far. Inter alia 20 scientific and 86 non-scientific publications were placed, 59 conferences and 54 fairs were attended.
Notable project events were a study visit held on Borkum in June 2018, allowing visitors first hand experience of the installations and attendance of the European Utility Week 2018 in Vienna with 4 NETfficient-presentations in the main programme.
Regarding progress beyond the state of the art, the energy management platform developed within the project is the first achievement that needs to be mentioned as a progress beyond what existed before the proyect. We also need to remark the 20K inverters without internal transformer installed in UC3 and UC5, that are one of the strongest points of the project because their low weight and the highest efficiency in the market.
Among potential impacts of the project we highlight these ones:
- Demonstrate the technical and economic synergy between local storage (ideally of several energy vectors), smart grid management, demand response and their integration with advanced ICT
- Demonstration of the integration of storage services in network management, particularly exploiting storage with electronic interfaces to facilitate the integration and back-up of highly variable renewable generation and dispersed demand response.

Deliverable D5.15 “Social, socio-economic and regulatory measures for local/small storage market uptake” has been developed. Main conclusions achieved are as follows:
- There is no “one single approach” for a storage market uptake, especially for local/small storage systems. Instead there are many individual pathways characterized by different local, social and technical aspects, that all could finally lead to investments into storage capacities also available for the grid and the markets.
- Current social awareness of the (potential) role of local/small storage systems is poor, leading to a lack of self-identification by a broad public. Focused market introduction programs with adequate monitoring and PR measures would be a good way to overcome this problem.
- Instead of focusing the discussions regarding the implementation of small storage technologies on simply cost/benefit aspects it would be necessary to also describe social benefits, and to transfer social value into remuneration for investors and operators.
NETfficient presenters at EUW2018, Vienna
NETfficient Logo
NETfficient Partners
Installation of PV on Touris Info on Borkum
NETfficient Showroom on Borkum
NETfficient Value Chain
Streetlighting powered by NETfficient
NETfficient Stand at EUW2018
Study Visit on Borkum
PV on home
PV on Seawater Aquarium Borkum
Monitoring at Stadtwerke Borkum
Batteries in MV-HESS
Hydrogen storage system
NETfficient Inverters by Zigor