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Digital PLAtform and analytic TOOls for eNergy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PLATOON (Digital PLAtform and analytic TOOls for eNergy)

Período documentado: 2020-01-01 hasta 2021-06-30

The digitalization of the energy sector enables higher levels of operational excellence with the adoption of disrupting technologies. The Energy Big Data framework of the modern smart energy networks provides an ideal ecosystem for knowledge exploitation from data. PLATOON proposes to deploy interoperable distributed/edge processing and data analytics technologies for optimized real-time energy system management in a simple way for the energy domain expert. The data governance among the different stakeholders for multi-party data exchange, sovereignty coordination and cooperation in the energy value chain will be guaranteed through IDS based connectors. The project will develop and use the PLATOON reference architecture, COSMAG (Comprehensive Architecture for Smart Grid)-compliant, for building and deploying scalable and replicable energy management data driver service / solutions that contribute to increased renewable energy consumption, smart grids management, increased energy efficiency and optimized energy asset management. The PLATOON architecture and components are valuable for the different stakeholders of energy sector value chain, starting from electricity supplier, passing through the distributor, the aggregator, the ESCo until the End User. The project will be validated in 7 pilots of 4 countries that provide real Energy Big Data cases. It aims to build the solution based on existing European standards and initiatives for managing the pilots’ data, for the access, models, interfaces, governance, and sovereignty. It also foresees to report back the results to the different standardization working groups. PLATOON will facilitate the technology transfer into the market by a well-established tendering process through Open Calls. The project will reinforce the European efforts for modernization of the European electricity grid, because it focuses the attention to new smart grids services through data and knowledge representation exploitation. Finally, the project will offer access to cheaper and sustainable energy for energy consumers and maximize social welfare.
PLATOON worked during this period on how to express the functional and technical needs (bottom-up approach based on pilots’ specificities) and expectations and to prepare the reference base for the technological WPs. It allowed to describe precisely and in a standardised way (IEC compliant methodology) the use cases for each pilot. This necessary description served as input for the Data exchange requirements (interoperable layer and secure data exchange layer) and Platform requirements. Moreover, two tasks provided the reference elements concerning the data protection issues that would be addressed in the pilots. A data Analytics Toolbox design has been created and completed.
The partners worked on the creation of several template documents and on the organization of different Pilot-Specific Workshops between the Pilot Leaders and the Technical Core. From this, a first version of the Implementation and Validation Plan was developed, ready to be fine-tuned in the next months. Then, the set-up of each pilot was defined and the execution of the implementation tasks started.
The 1st Open Call of PLATOON has been successfully launched and managed. The project received double the expected number of submissions (KPI was 40 per Open call, 80 in total received). The PLATOON consortium selected 6 relevant projects after 9 months of preparation and execution. FBA is currently undergoing the SGA (Sub-Grant Agreement) preparation process where the selected SMEs are formally enrolled in Technology Transfer Programme 1 (TTP1) (the 1st Support Programme). The kick-off of this 9-month long programme aimed at the development and implementation of solutions within the PLATOON pilots was scheduled for the 1st of July 2021. In parallel to these activities, FBC (FBA’s LTP) has created momentum around PLATOON’s target audience by creating a community on the FundingBox platform, as well as by recruiting and managing Supportive Partners and Ambassadors to create further outreach about the PLATOON project and its Open Calls, and finally by supporting TIB to communicate and disseminate the Open Calls.
A Communication & Dissemination strategy has been developed and realized for the PLATOON project. 950+ followers on the Twitter account and 1.600+ followers on the LinkedIn account of the PLATOON project were generated. A project website has been set up, displaying the, latest news, up-to-date developments & more that have been disseminated to the target groups. PLATOON partners have visited 50+ online events related to topics like energy, digitalization, sustainability, or innovation.
At the scientific level, three main scientific events have been organized by consortium partners: the LAMBDA summer school and PhD Workshop in June 2021; the 2nd and 3rd International Workshops on Transforming Big Data into Actionable Knowledge (BiDAW) collocated with the IEEE Big Data and the Web Conference 2020 and 2021; the EU Project Networking in the context of ESWC 2021. Lastly, a scientific article describing an edge-computing framework to implement the PLATOON framework has been published in the International Journal of Applied Science (MPDI).
In total, ten peer-reviewed publications were accepted in this period. Five of them are published, and the rest are in the process of publication by the corresponding publisher.
The main innovation of PLATOON project is the proposed end-to-end solution for a federated ecosystem to exchange data, its representations and services while ensuring interoperability, security, sovereignty and privacy of both data and services. PLATOON goes beyond the state of the art by implementing and demonstrating these technical solutions into 8 real-life large-scale pilots. PLATOON can be regarded as a first attempt to establish the grounds for a future European Energy Data space.
Different variants of the edge-cloud framework instantiation scenarios related to the O&M/Control were identified: distributed control, centralized control and hybrid (aggregated) control. based on the pilots’ technical requirements, the initial components of the PLATOON Edge-Cloud framework were identified, focusing on easy management of edge-node services and deployment of real-time processing capabilities to the edge nodes and other parts of analytic tools to the Cloud or Central computer. A refinement of the initial technical framework proposal, the initial open-source edge-cloud framework was compiled supporting automated deployment of a framework on all nodes, Docker images with analytic tools (T4.1) node management, service management, orchestration and security.
The next part of the PLATOON project, period will serve software integration of the different modules developed in WP2, WP3 and WP4 in a form of PLATOON Platform that will facilitate the development of new data-driven services and ensure that security, privacy, and access-control policies are enforced in all the components of the distributed system. It will also contribute to the setup, deployment and operation of large-scale pilots (LSP) that make use of digital platforms, data governance schema and data analytic toolboxes, to develop prototype applications on top of the platforms, and validate the platforms in both reduced, controlled environments and in real-life use cases.
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