As the EU moves towards sustainable energy, co-creation processes are the future for the design of energy service markets. This entails a shift in the balance of power, turning customers into a new generation of collaborators and putting them at the heart of the energy sector. The EU-funded SENDER project will develop energy service applications for proactive demand response (DR), home automation, convenience, and security mechanisms. By engaging customers in a co-creation process, the project will shift DR from a reactive to a proactive approach. Consumer data will be collected and processed to identify typical consumption patterns, mirror them by digital twins (DTs) based on artificial intelligence technologies and aggregate the DTs' supply/demand characteristics.
Therefore, the core issue being addressed by SENDER is how to tap the huge, unused potential of demand-side flexibility from households based on co-creation processes with consumers, innovative technologies, new business models, and targeted replication activities all over Europe.
The societal importance of SENDER is reflected by putting consumers at the center of the electricity market. Consumer engagement strategies are applied to actively involve consumers into the development of household-related information and communication technologies (ICT) innovations, business models that strengthen the consumer role, and energy management systems (EMS) that increase the renewable energy sources (RES) hosting capacity of the grid. A dedicated co-creation steering group with consumer integration has the potential to increase the number and types of consumers engaged in DR across Europe.
The SENDER project is focused on:
• Developing innovative DR and smart home solutions by placing consumers at the center of the project using a co-creation approach.
• Integrating more renewables into the electricity system by applying innovative DR tools.
• Using consumer data to improve behavior predictions to create consumer DTs and DR tools.
• Establishing interoperability of system components by testing them in a virtual lab prior to implementing DT and DR tools at three pilot sites targeting mainly households.
• Developing sustainable business models and a roadmap for the deployment of the solution after the project lifecycle using a replicability study approach.