Integration of Demand Response in building energy management systems and sub-sequent penetration in energy markets heavily relies on the deep and comprehensive understanding of real-life complexities imposed during actual operation, as well as, on the smooth end-to-end interoperable communication between all actors involved. The inadequacy of current technical offerings, business practices, market structures and regulatory frameworks to effectively address and smoothly integrate all these interrelated domains is the root cause for the slow pace of DR introduction in energy markets and the failure to empower consumers towards becoming more active energy market actors. In this context, HOLISDER establishes a Holistic Demand Response Optimization Framework which adequately tackles all current shortcomings that hinder demand response integration and penetration in energy markets and empowers consumers to engage and benefit from energy market transactions, towards reducing their energy bills and further improving their revenues through the provision of services to energy networks. To this end, HOLISDER builds on top of proven and mature technological components, currently available open standards and novel business models towards enabling:
· Significant energy costs savings for energy consumers, through the deployment of innovative human-centric implicit demand response programmes
· Creation of new revenue streams for energy consumers and their introduction as active balancing and ancillary assets in energy markets
· Wide promotion of self-consumption for prosumers, through the introduction of a holistic optimization approach, incorporating advanced algorithms for accurate demand flexibility definition
· Utilization of the currently unleashed storage capacity of buildings through the introduction of a cost-effective and highly efficient thermal storage solution
· Proper tackling of consumers’ reluctance to participate in Demand Response, through the establishment of a human-centric DR optimization framework
· Further facilitation of consumers’ participation in energy markets through innovative business models and representation schemes through intermediaries and third parties
· High replicability across different building types and systems, through the introduction of the HOLISDER Interoperability and Secure Data Management Framework
· Advanced adaptability to demand response regulations around EU Member States
· Enhanced operational stability and security of energy networks, through the introduction of the HOLISDER Global Demand Manager, allowing for detailed flexibility analysis, segmentation, classification and clustering of consumers’ portfolios, along with dynamic Virtual Power Plants (VPP) formulation.