RENewAble Integration and SuStainAbility iN energy CommunitiEs

Project Information

RENAISSANCE

Grant agreement ID: 824342

DOI

10.3030/824342

Project closed

EC signature date 1 April 2019

Start date 1 May 2019

End date 31 October 2022

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost

€ 6 858 606,78

EU contribution

€ 5 935 937,50

Coordinated by

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - RENAISSANCE (RENewAble Integration and SuStainAbility iN energy CommunitiEs)

Reporting period: 2021-11-01 to 2022-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Renaissance project is an Innovation Action (IA) which aim is to deliver a community-driven scalable and replicable approach, to implement new business models and technologies supporting clean production and shared distribution of energy in local communities.
In the first phase the Consortium will collect data to identify stable and equitable business cases in four Local Energy Communities (LEC) across Europe, thank to MAMCA analysis.
The resulting scenarios will support the co-design of the ReEnergise tool, which will help identifying the optimal configuration for an integrated and decarbonised Local Energy Systems (LES). The tool will be tested in each Pilot Site and followed by a financial viability assessment.
Thereafter an innovative platform for integrated management and value delivery across all actors will be implemented and interoperability realised.
As a consequence, the energy communities of prosumers at demonstrator sites will be fully connected and the use of RES will likely increase beyond 27% .
In the last phase, the RENAISSANCE approach will be simulated under market conditions connecting 10 sites across the globe, to demonstrate its scalability and replicability.
To deliver a proven community-driven approach which is scalable and replicable globally, RENAISSANCE will:

- bring to the market a set of tools that allow identifying business cases for clean integrated systems in any local environment
- allow dynamic mapping of energy vectors and associated financial values
- identify new business models to activate a critical mass of local stakeholders

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

RENAISSANCE came to an end having achieved its purpose of developing a holistic approach in the development of LECs.
The final results and outputs include a number of tools and results:
A conclusive summary of the work undertaken in RP03:
• Management and coordination, risk management, quality strategy, data management, reporting (2nd Periodic Report and D1.4 Final Report included)
• The multi-vector optimization software tool, which is described in detail in D2.4 and makes up the backend of the RENERGiSE tool, together with the application of the optimization tools on the Pilot Sites (D2.5 Optimised site design of the demonstrators)
• Development of the RENERGiSE front end, with a user-friendly and easy to navigate format (presented in D2.6 RENERGiSE designed interface)
• The combination of the backend and frontend, implemented in T2.7 together with an additional round of investigation of the user friendliness of the tool
• In Wp3, the final business case report, D3.2 which continues the work of D3.1 and presents the business cases in the global replication sites
• The evaluation and validation of the energy agreements, fully completed by end of 2021 and presented in D3.4
• A comparative feasibility study of the business cases of the project and the results of the assessment (in D3.5)
• The complete integration of all tools previously developed in WP4, now fit into the RENAISSANCE Platform (ROP) and presented in great detail in D4.6
• The final measurements of the operation of the Pilot Sites, resulting into D5.5. Final Validation report, where we can see the actual results of the 3-year implementation, based on KPI measurements and analysis, together with some valuable lessons learnt and future actions.
• Full implementation of WP6, with the assessment of the Pilot Sites using D2.4 and subsequent recommendations, explained in D6.2
• The final report on all the work undertaken in global replication sites around the world, allowing the replicability and scalability of some of the RENAISSANCE tools and methodologies, described in D6.4 and accompanied by the respective in-depth regulatory barriers analysis per country in D6.5
• The assessment of the potential realization and implementation of smart clusters of energy communities that can act as a virtual power plant and trade directly with the TSO-DSO market, in D6.4.
• The final report on the stakeholder engagement multi-level campaign, that was the focus of the RENAISSANCE work in the past 12 months, proving that with customer participation, everything is possible (presented in D7.4)
• Last but not least, and with great interest, the final report on the exploitation of the project, with a market analysis and business models: in D7.6
• The first assessment of the Pilot Sites operation was completed (D5.4 Validation Report)
In addition, a very successful WP7 Communication and Dissemination led to the over-achievement of KPIs, with 18 scientific publications, a successful public final event, lots of recognition (Renaissance has been invited in numerous events as a guest) ad a strong brand.

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)

RENAISSANCE has contributed with the development of its approach through 3 tiers of demonstrators. The base is the site of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where advanced generation, storage and management hardware is installed, and highly detailed data is made open source. RENAISSANCE will be demonstrated in 3 sites with different settings; a publicly controlled urban community (GR), an end-user driven urban community (NL) an and-user driven remote community (ES). Finally, the integrated approach will be presented to sites in India, USA, Poland, UK to be ´localised´ and tested against market conditions.
The RENAISSANCE project aims to activate the high potential of replicability of smart grid solutions provided by the RENAISSANCE approach. The approach is a breakthrough in reaching widely applicable and replicable pathways for local energy systems, in particular relevant for small to medium sized communities. To maximise the expected impact, RENAISSANCE has set up an approach for in-project demonstration, replication and wide validation for key markets within Europe and at global level.
Consumer activation will be explored in two ways; where possible, the percentage of consumers in a defined catchment area voluntarily switching to RENAISSANCE energy communities, and as secondary indicator, the percentage of consumer in a defined catchment actively using supporting applications.
The EC maintains as 2030 target for RES share in Gross Final Energy Consumption of 27%. While there are ambitions to localising, there are no targets for local RES. As baseline, RENAISSANCE therefore aims to demonstrate the commercial feasibility of achieving the 2030 target of 27% of energy production at local level. By offsetting non-RES with RES, the annual CO2 emissions savings - measured against CO2 loads for national energy mixes – for the project are 565 tonnes per year.
The RENAISSANCE project can have a major impact on the overall average costs and environmental impact of energy consumption in Europe once replicated at large scale – across all low voltage energy nodes of Europe. Assumptions; other energy islands have a similar local RES capacity as the demonstrators, and the strategic value of oversized DSO/TSO connections is not taken into account.

Project KERs

MAMCA Project in Renaissance Project

Project Concept

Project scenario process

Project Stakeholder map