The OPENAI was a one-year project focusing on the improvements of smart grid functionalities and energy efficiency services, as well as contributing to the development of new generation energy markets. The project has started in February 2021 fully conforming with the plan specified in Annex 1 of the Grant Agreement. By the end of the project timeline, all major deliverables and milestones are completed in line with the Description of Action (DoA), confirming that the project has achieved its aims for the reporting period. With respect to the exploitable results, the work done in 12 months were divided into two areas: 1) The first and the main area of the research for the OPENAI project was the artificial intelligence (AI) applications in the energy sector. In this regard, the project aimed to develop an innovative methodology applicable for the prediction of energy consumption and demand. The core idea was to use AI and other statistical models for the analysis and optimization of energy production and distribution systems and the improvement of decision-making processes in smart grids. 2) The second area of the research included the research and designing of a fully digitalized energy marketplace. The key idea was to investigate the capabilities of newly developed blockchain technologies together with AI techniques in the development of distributed energy marketplaces enabling to conduct of energy exchange and trading activities without third-party intermediaries. By the end of the one-year project, the research study has proposed a novel multi-stage methodology for building a prediction system for electricity consumption combining an XGBoost feature selection algorithm, discrete wavelet transform-based (DWT) denoising scheme, and a statistical forecasting tool called SARIMAX. In addition, a conceptual design of a fully decentralized energy trading platform integrating blockchain technologies and P2P trading mechanisms has been presented.
