Smarter grids are gaining the ability for electricity customers to change electricity usage and the way they can contribute to the system optimization.
New technologies and determinations are opening up new perspectives and consumers will assume a completely new role. Accordingly, the market needs to adapt and data accessibility has the potential to facilitate higher openness and competition.
In the FLEXICIENCY project, selected for funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 646482, access to data is addressed to foster deployment of new services not in place or fully exploited in Europe. The development of an EU Market Place (MP) prototype, together with open interfaces, will catalyze the interactions between stakeholders and encourage cross-country and cross-player access to services at EU level. Being a virtual ICT environment communicating with IT platforms, it acts as pan-European meeting point between stakeholders, able to exchange data and services with the ultimate purpose to provide services to customers. No physical data transfer or storage occurs on the MP, which acts as a gateway for service requests.
Based on a common framework for data exchange, FLEXICIENCY demonstrates novel services in the market. 4 DSOs run complementary demos with real customers and a 5th is run in Austria, where smart metering is not yet available.
The Project also emphasized the cross demonstration aspect and the interaction with external stakeholders in order to show the usefulness and the benefits of the EU Market Place.
Three service categories were covered: Advanced energy monitoring (with energy consumptions and production information made available to the customers); Local energy control (tools and algorithms for local energy control and modulation); Flexibility (by a group of aggregated customers, distributed systems of loads and generators, including a micro grid).
Here below is a list of main recommendations and lessons learned of the Project. For further details, please visit the Project website to download publicly available documentation (D11.6)
• Standardization of data exchange formats is key to facilitate data provision, by implementing EUMED CIM. Based on the Common Information Model, it added further attributed to fit the FLEXICIENCY use cases;
• Reduced time to market. The adoption of a common communication standard and single set of interfaces specifications both for B2B and for communications with EU MP has proved to speed up the process with respect to Business As Usual scenario;
• Data protection and GDPR compliance ensured. Market Place implementation does not imply additional requirements in terms of customers/company data protection;
• Project achieved the TRL7 although further actions are needed to fully adopt FLEXICIENCY market place, collecting more feedback to adapt Market Place to commercial users’ needs and implementing a more user-friendly interface;
• Company authentication should be further addressed;
• The B2C services offered have proved to be attractive and effective. Willingness to recommend and customer satisfaction were high which proves customers were engaged and the services were attractive. There is a potential for increased energy efficiency in public sector although closer communication with management is required;
• Integration with existing national data hubs. The FLEXICIENCY platform can be an as extra layer above existing data management systems;
• All the services demonstrated have a positive internal value (min. 25% of savings when using the EU MP);
• Where data hubs are available, third party access to validated data should be regulated.
