WP1 – Project Management

 

The overall project management and interface between the Project Management Team and the European Commission (EC) are the main objectives of this WP. It will also consist in constantly updating the key indicators of the project and monitor every WP’s risk controls; and coordinate all technical tasks.

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WP2 – AI algorithms optimisation, Blockchain deployment & End-to-end VPP enabling Framework

 

The goal of this work package is to optimise the SW and HW components of the solution so that the AI algorithms can run seamlessly to optimise the community energy assets and smart contracts are registered with blockchain distributed ledger technology to speed up member transactions in a secure way. This work package will also focus on balancing market technical and legal requirement analysis to ensure compliance with grid standards and be able to operate and deliver the services in foreign markets, since their requirements vary from market to market. As a big amount of real-time data collection is acquired from heterogeneous sources and the speed of remote-control actions is critical, the work will focus on improving data frequency communications to meet legal requirements as well as introduce missing communication standard protocols in the HW/SW solution.

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WP3 – Market design & tariff structure optimisation for Energy Community

 

The goal of this work package is to develop an optimal market design for the Flexible Energy Communities and to deliver welfare-maximizing tariff structures that maximize and efficiently distribute value through the various stakeholders, according to their role. To achieve a flexibility management economic optimum, various revenue streams will be considered along with their impact on the opportunity cost of participating. New business models to support innovative market design and optimum tariff structures will be developed, which will then originate rules to support smart energy contract configuration, registered by secure energy transactions via blockchain mechanisms.

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WP4 – Balancing and ancillary services design to procure Energy Communities Flexibility

 

The goal of the WP is to contribute to project’s objective 3 by demonstrating that system operator needs concerning grid support can be satisfied by Energy Communities (EC). It will validate the Balancing and Ancillary Markets’ Business Model for the participation of the aggregator by simulating its activation in a realistic environment. Similarly, it will validate the capability of the VPP system to receive and activate services’ request orders from the TSO. This demonstration will rely on techno-economic simulation of the business models and evaluation through economic performance indicators, such as NPV and break-even point, which provides inputs to contracts between the aggregator and the energy community members.

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WP5 – Community Power Flex and Energy Markets interfaces

 

After integrating all new developed functionalities and algorithms in the solution, user interfaces will need to be updated to enable the use of all optimisation features and deliver the flexibility management service to customers meeting usability requirements. The optimisation actions, market offers, community performance and member energy assets and economic details will be made accessible in the Flexible Energy Community interface modules. New energy community modules will be developed to display described functionalities and community energy asset management tools. The community manager interface module will include both integral overview of energy community consumption and generation, energy costs and revenues, benchmarking at user and community level, and flexibility pool management options and aggregation tools. The community members interface module will show flexibility and energy efficiency, track and record transactions and economic benefits analysis.

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WP6 – Pilots testing, demonstration and validation

 

In this work package scaling-up demonstration and deployment of the proposed innovative solution will be accomplished in real world buildings and communities. These deployments will be used for the validation and evaluation of the implemented VPP platform and flexibility business models. Besides functional validation, the goal is to test the impact and effectiveness of the solution across different markets and diverse stakeholders, validate economic impact and analyse energy consumer behaviour and engagement with innovative energy business models. Two different demonstrators will be deployed, in two different countries with distinct energy market levels of matureness to simulate different European market realities. In Iberia, Simples Energia will work with its customers to deploy the community pilot. By installing the VPP technology empowered by Blockchain and AI algorithms the consortium will be able to implement, optimize and validate new energy flexibility business models and operate a VPP with the energy community. Another pilot, in the UK, will be deployed with the help of Electric Corby. The proposed solution will create an Energy Community in Corby and demonstrate new energy strategies to optimise the community by reducing energy costs and optimising DER. The evaluation of these real-life trials, namely their effective realization and impact assessment, will provide valuable results to explore in the commercial roll-out.

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WP7 - IP management

 

Since the results of FlexUnity project are foreseen to be highly innovative, the goal of this work package is to ensure that all project results are formulated and compiled into a protectable form and all necessary patents are made. Even if some of the results cannot be patented, other forms of IP protection will be considered.

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WP8 – Dissemination, Market expansion & roll-out strategy

 

The first goal of this WP is to perform a wide dissemination, communication, and awareness program of project results, targeting all relevant groups at national and European level. Another goal will be to analyse appropriate commercial roll-out and market expansion strategy in order to rise the exploitation potential of project outputs for each commercial partner.

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WP9 – Ethics requirements

 

This work package sets out the 'ethics requirements' that the project must comply with.