Capacity building in Smart and Innovative eNERGY management

Project Information

SINERGY

Grant agreement ID: 952140

DOI

10.3030/952140

Project closed

EC signature date 10 June 2020

Start date 1 January 2021

End date 31 December 2023

Funded under

• Twinning of research institutions

Total cost

€ 892 500,00

EU contribution

€ 892 500,00

Coordinated by

INSTITUT MIHAJLO PUPIN
Serbia

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SINERGY (Capacity building in Smart and Innovative eNERGY management)

Reporting period: 2022-04-01 to 2023-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The primary objective of SINERGY is to strengthen the research capacity and further unlock the innovation potential of the Institute Mihajlo Pupin (IMP), transforming it into a regional Centre of Excellence in Smart Energy Management. Once established, as a novel regional excellence centre, IMP will promote the added value of smart energy management technologies, coordinate research efforts and unite scarce research resources in this field in the Southeast Europe region, but also encourage communication with leading external EU parties, aiming at full integration into the European Research Area (ERA). In this way, IMP will be capable of further disseminating the project outcomes (strategies, policies, training courses, webinars, etc.) and supporting companies and institutions (both research and industrial) in the region to strengthen their EU competitiveness. To reach the SINERGY ambitious objectives, a strategic partnership and transfer of multidisciplinary “know-how” from leading EU research institutions such as the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) and the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), and beyond, play a main role in gaining and exchanging the related competences needed for the development of high impact innovative energy management solutions suitable for efficient and reliable energy networks of the future.

SINERGY's main objectives are
OB1: Strategic Partnership.
OB2: Reinforcement of scientific and technical excellence of the linked institutions.
OB3: Cross-fertilization and aggregation of competencies and experience related to smart grid technologies and energy-efficient building operation.
OB4: Organization of joint networking events for capacity building and spreading excellence throughout the widening country and the West Balkan/Southeast Europe region.
OB5: Awareness raising and promotion of the newly established Centre of Excellence serving as a regional “point of reference” for Smart energy management.
OB6: Continuous assessment of the key-objectives achievement to ensure high quality of project results and defined cooperation strategy is followed.

SINERGY has three knowledge exchange and demonstration pilots
PILOT 1: SMART GRID TECHNOLOGIES (Leader AIT), https://project-sinergy.org/Pilot-1
PILOT 2: ENERGY EFFICIENT BUILDING OPERATION (Leader NUIG), https://project-sinergy.org/Pilot-2
TESTBED PILOT: SMART ENERGY MANAGEMENT LABORATORY (at IMP premises), https://project-sinergy.org/Pilot-3

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

Main results achieved are:
- educational resources, https://project-sinergy.org/Lectures;
- knowledge transfer and staff exchanges between the project partners that supported the preparation of joint project proposals and research papers, see Publications, https://project-sinergy.org/Results/Publications;
- organization of training activities;
- participation at fairs and exhibitions, see https://project-sinergy.org/Fairs-Exhibitions;
- participation at scientific conferences, see https://project-sinergy.org/Conferences;
- promotion of IMP (early-stage and senior) researchers in their careers, see https://project-sinergy.org/Invited-Lectures-Keynotes;
- design and development of innovative solutions and services;
- and other.

IMP is doing research on state-of-the-art methods for developing the following types of services
• Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) (deep learning techniques);
• Local and aggregated energy demand/consumption prediction (machine learning and data-driven techniques);
• Renewable energy sources (RES) generation forecasting (deterministic and probabilistic models);
• Energy dispatch optimisation (mixed integer linear programming, heuristic opt.);
• Energy performance evaluation and benchmarking (data envelopment and ML).

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)

Scientific Impact
SINERGY activities are aligned with the recent research trends, and will contribute to the advancement of the existing services at the selected pilot sites (IMP, AIT, NUIG) and the development of new advanced energy management services in the following domains:
- Energy Efficiency User Benchmarking
- Energy-related forecasting
- Grid capacity management
- Hardware-in-the-loop testing
- Multi-agent distributed energy optimization
- Integrated platforms for demand response management
- Thermal building modelling
- Validation of demand response management

Social impact
SINERGY strategy for spreading excellence and raising awareness targets industrial stakeholders and academic & research institutions, at both national and regional levels. Both energy providers and end consumers will benefit from such advanced energy management services.
Customers could contract these new services since true economic savings are expected. These economic savings will be achieved both from energy savings due to the optimised control actions (including optimised energy dispatch), and demand side management (promoting consumption during low-cost hours). Energy providers, in addition to these revenues, will reduce their exposure to market risk (trespassing the real energy prices of the markets to the customers without risk premium) and to volume risk as the company will be aware, almost in real-time, of the user consumption, and will be able to adapt their acquisitions of energy in wholesale markets.

Economic impact
Specific exploitation opportunities are in these domains:
- Distributed energy generation: Integration with renewable and distributed energy resources allows for both local consumption (and storing of energy surplus) or exchange of generated energy with the smart grid. In this way, the energy supply mix will be delivered to the end consumers while maximizing the exploitation of renewable energy and reducing the consumption of conventional energy sources. Such business model could be offered to the energy providers, DSOs as well as to the end consumers and municipalities.
- Advanced energy services: As part of the smart grid concept, energy services correspond to a business model in which companies that provide energy services offer their customers the opportunity to reduce and optimize their energy consumption by installing systems and equipment, and by proactively managing their energy consumption. This business model is generally reserved for large consumers.
- Building operation efficiency: Building operation can be made more energy efficient by considering the thermal characteristic of building envelope and its significant energy users (i.e. large consumption devices such as air handling units). Leveraged by fault detection and diagnostics algorithm, significant improvement in energy efficiency can be achieved by detecting the system malfunction on time. Building managers and end consumers will be targeted by this business model.
- Smart home solutions: In the case of smart home solutions, individual customers are the focus, as it is customers who are responsible for managing energy consumption using electronic equipment installed in homes or based on consumption recommendations provided by power retailers or companies entering the energy sector.

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