The SpurUP project brings together 34 partners from 11 EU countries, including universities and research institutions, technology providers, local authorities, industries and NGOs. This diverse and experienced team will work together to create resilient, climate-neutral peri-urban regions that enhance the sustainability and well-being of communities, addressing the challenges under the domains of industry and governance.
SpurUP aims to integrate net-zero technologies and foster participatory governance to tackle environmental pressures and fragmented governance in these regions. The project will establish Local Green Deals (LGDs) to unite public and private sectors in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, improving energy efficiency, and promoting social equity and sustainability.
Implemented through 3 Living Labs in Thessaloniki, Greece; Aalborg, Denmark; and Jesi, Italy, SpurUP will test innovative technologies and digital tools tailored to each region’s needs. Key objectives include decarbonization, circular economy practices, and enhanced governance and stakeholder engagement. Additionally, 3 replication sites in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria; Tulcea, Romania; and Bristol, UK will further demonstrate the scalability and adaptability of the solutions.
SpurUP aims to significantly reduce GHG emissions, improve energy efficiency, and increase the deployment of renewable energy technologies. The project will promote sustainable industrial practices and better integrate peri-urban areas into planning processes.
The project employs a three-tier strategy to maximize impact and scalability. The first tier involves testing and validating solutions in the Living Labs. The second tier engages an external group of stakeholders, including regional and local authorities, to provide feedback and validate the solutions. The third tier focuses on scaling and replicating successful solutions across additional regions and local authorities in Europe and globally.
Competitive conflicts for land use between the energy and food sectors have appeared, which could be mitigated by the vertical integration of RES in farms through new circular business models. By this approach, farms will become climate neutral, optimising their production and reducing their impact on natural resources and biodiversity, on top of providing energy services to communities and diversifying their economic income. However, there is a need to identify, understand and overcome major existing barriers perceived by agricultural communities. Moreover, current initiatives do not to effectively consider and address the complex interactions and factors from the farming and RES context, thus missing to support decision making based on accurate projections, estimations and forecasts. HarvRESt will work on these needs by improving the existing knowledge and its fragmented status, which will be feed to an Agricultural Virtual Power Plant able to run different scenarios and farm configurations to determine the best operation procedures for a given RES solution. This data will be then provided to a decision support system able to weight trade-offs and key indicators to provide ad-hoc recommendations to farmers and policy makers, thus enabling the consecution of improved production rates on renewable energy, food & feed within agro communities. For the successful execution of HarvRESt and implementation of recommendations, a multi-actor approach fostering co-creation sessions together with the provision of training materials for farmers empowerment will be implemented. The full approach of HarvRESt will be supported and executed at 4 use cases representing different topologies of farms, a diversity of stakeholders and organizational structures, distinct geographical conditions and a wide variety of RES technologies. Together with HarvRESt community and mapped initiatives, the project will act as a hub for knowledge and best-practices on RES integration at farm level.
eFORT approach aimed to enable the further upgrading of the energy grid without affecting the security of supply and increasing their reliability and resiliency against extreme weather events, man-made hazards and equipment failures. The project put in place a set of solutions at the cyber and physical layers for detecting, preventing and mitigating vulnerabilities and threats. Among them, an interoperable Intelligent Platform set a common foundation for grid characterization and vulnerability overseeing, as well as gathered information from smart grid components and applied heavy-duty algorithms, whereas Asset Management developments strengthened grid infrastructure robustness, which was empowered by the addressed Digital Technologies. All these elements were validated in relevant environments coming from 4 demo cases covering the whole grid value chain: (i) a transmission network (The Netherlands); (ii) a remote distribution grid (Italy); (iii) a digital substation in Ukraine; and (iv) a micro-grid in Spain.
PANTERA project aimed to deliver a pan-European multi-dimensional collaborative platform that brought on board all active stakeholders in Europe under the same umbrella for collaboration, collective thinking and actions, capable of leveraging coherence and trust as a pull towards enhanced R&I in energy systems. PANTERA provided easy access, ready-made tools, real data from projects with results build in case studies for exploitation / utilization, building of future scenarios and an attractive environment for generating the vision of tomorrow in the smartgrids domain. Based on pan-European entities that were active in PANTERA, the envisaged platform strove for long term solidarity to build the required trust capable of delivering the much-wanted benefits of sharing results and knowledge and learning from best practice activities in the relevant fields.
The vision of PERSEPHONE was to design and deploy an innovative IT ecosystem for motivating end-users’ behavioural changes towards the adoption of energy efficient lifestyles, building upon the evolvements in the Internet of Things, Data Modelling and Analysis and Recommendation and Gamification eras. PERSEPHONE aimed to support energy efficiency in the buildings sector through behavioural change of the occupants with regards to their daily energy consumption profile, as well as their preferences in terms of a personal comfort zone. The main distinguishing characteristic of PERSEPHONE was that it exploited the advantages provided by a set of novel ICT technologies for enabling the design, development and provision of personalized energy management and awareness services in smart buildings. The philosophy of the proposed approach was based on the provision of personalized services that could lead to behavioural change through energy consumption awareness and motives provided to occupants based on their behavioural profile. The main motivation for developing the PERSEPHONE solution regarded the improvement of energy efficiency in small houses and offices along with the identified market opportunity for the provision of personalized and intelligent energy management services. PERSEPHONE aimed to achieve energy efficiency without sacrificing the comfort of inhabitants, achieve behavioural change in long term through the adoption of more energy efficient policies, while offering a sustainable approach that could be adopted without being very intrusive.
Sustainable energy Positive & zero cARbon CommunitieS demonstrated and validated technically and socioeconomically viable and replicable, innovative solutions for rolling out smart, integrated positive energy systems for the transition to a citizen centred zero carbon & resource efficient economy. SPARCS facilitated the participation of buildings to the energy market enabling new services and a virtual power plant concept, creating VirtualPositiveEnergy communities as energy democratic playground (positive energy districts could exchange energy with energy entities located outside the district). Seven cities demonstrated 100+ actions turning buildings, blocks, and districts into energy prosumers. Impacts spanned economic growth, improved quality of life, and environmental benefits towards the EC policy framework for climate and energy, the SET plan and UN Sustainable Development goals. SPARCS co-creation brought together citizens, companies, research organizations, city planning and decisionmaking entities, transforming cities to carbon-free inclusive communities. Lighthouse cities Espoo (FI) and Leipzig (DE) implemented large demonstrations. Fellow cities Reykjavik (IS), Maia (PT), Lviv (UA), Kifissia (EL) and Kladno (CZ) prepared replication with hands-on feasibility studies. SPARCs identified bankable actions to accelerate market uptake, pioneered innovative, exploitable governance and business models boosting the transformation processes, joint procurement procedures and citizen engaging mechanisms in an overarching city planning instrument toward the bold City Vision 2050. SPARCS engaged 30 partners from 8 EU Member States (FI, DE, PT, CY, EL, BE, CZ, IT) and 2 non-EU countries (UA, IS), representing key stakeholders within the value chain of urban challenges and smart, sustainable cities bringing together three distinct but also overlapping knowledge areas: (i) City Energy Systems, (ii) ICT and Interoperability, (iii) Business Innovation and Market Knowledge.
SYNERGIES introduced a reference Energy Data Space Implementation that attempted to unleash the data-driven innovation and sharing potential across the energy data value chain by leveraging on data and intelligence coming from diverse energy actors (prioritizing on consumers and introducing them as data owners/ providers) and coupled sectors (buildings, mobility) and effectively making them reachable and widely accessible. In turn, it facilitated the transition from siloed data management approaches to collaborative ones which promote the creation of a data and intelligence ecosystem around energy (and other types of) data and enabled the realization of data (intelligence)-driven innovative energy services that (i) valued the flexibility capacity of consumers in optimizing energy networks’ operation, maximizing RES integration and self-consumption at different levels of the system (community, building), (ii) evidently supported network operators in optimally monitoring, operating, maintaining and planning their assets and coordinating between each other (TSO-DSO collaboration) for enhancing system resilience, (iii) created an inclusive pathway towards the energy transition, through consumer empowerment, awareness and informed involvement in flexibility market transactions, (iv) stepped on real data streams and intelligence to deliver personalized and automated features to increase prosumer acceptance and remove intrusiveness, (v) facilitated the establishment of sustainable LECs by enhancing their role with Aggregator and BSP functions, and (vi) established solid grounds for the creation of a new economy around energy data produced and shared across a complex value chain, in a secure, trustful, fair and acceptable manner. SYNERGIES was extensively validated in 3 large-scale demonstration sites in Greece, Spain and Denmark involving complete value chains, diverse data sources, heterogeneous energy systems/assets and spanning different socio-economic characteristics.
The transition to the smart grid era is associated with the creation of a meshed network of data contributors that necessitates for the transformation of the traditional top-down business model, where power system optimization relied on centralized decisions based on data silos preserved by stakeholders, to a more horizontal one in which optimization decisions are based on interconnected data assets and collective intelligence. Consequently, the need for “end-to-end” coordination between the electricity stakeholders, not only in business terms but also in exchanging information is becoming a necessity to enable the enhancement of electricity networks’ stability and resilience, while satisfying individual business process optimization targets of all stakeholders involved in the value chain. SYNERGY introduced a novel reference big data architecture and platform that leveraged data, primary or secondarily related to the electricity domain, coming from diverse sources (APIs, historical data, statistics, sensors/ IoT, weather, energy markets and various other open data sources) to help electricity stakeholders to simultaneously enhance their data reach, improve their internal intelligence on electricity-related optimization functions, while getting involved in novel data (intelligence) sharing/trading models, in order to shift individual decision-making at a collective intelligence level.
To this end SYNERGY developed a highly effective a Big Energy Data Platform and AI Analytics Marketplace, accompanied by big data-enabled applications for the totality of electricity value chain stakeholders (altogether integrated in the SYNERGY Big Data-driven EaaS Framework). SYNERGY was validated in 5 largescale demonstrators, in Greece, Spain, Austria, Finland and Croatia involving diverse actors and data sources, heterogeneous energy assets, varied voltage levels and network conditions and spanning different climatic, demographic and cultural characteristics.
TwinERGY introduced a first-of-a-kind Digital Twin framework that incorporated the required intelligence for optimizing demand response at the local level without compromising the well-being of consumers and their daily schedules and operations. The main idea behind the conception of the TwinERGY project lay on the interest of the project partners to exploit the new business opportunities that project implementation delivered and increase the relevance of the DR optimization tools and strategies in the new generation of energy management systems. By coupling mature practice for citizen engagement with service innovation through the lenses of public value, TwinERGY ensured that a wide range of interests and especially of consumers/prosumers were represented and supported in the energy marketplace. In this context, TwinERGY developed, configured and integrated an innovative suite of tools, services and applications for consumers, enabling increase of awareness and knowledge about consumption patterns, energy behaviours, generation/ demand forecasts and increase of local intelligence via properly established Digital Twin-based Consumer-Centric Energy Management and Control Decision Support mechanisms that locally optimize demand response. Key use cases were trialed across 4 pilot regions making use of cutting-edge methods and tools. Special focus was given on standardization and policy & market reform as key enablers for the successful commercialization of the TwinERGY results. Additional attention was given in establishing knowledge transfer and exchange synergies with similar projects listed under the BRIDGE Initiative, while explicit focus was given on the establishment of close collaboration with the projects funded under the LC-SC3-ES-5-2018 topic, to further reinforce and catalyze collaborative advancements in research, innovation, regulatory and market issues around Demand Response, RES Integration and Consumer Engagement.
The need for more flexible electricity markets to match demand with supply is becoming more urgent as renewables are comprising a larger portion of Europe’s energy supply. The EU-funded X-FLEX project supported this new era of energy generation and production. It proposed a set of integrated solutions that facilitated the optimum combination of decentralised flexibility assets. This allowed grid operators and prosumers to offer flexible grid solutions in the local and wholesale market, creating benefits along the smart grid value chain. X-FLEX solutions were tested in four pilot sites in three member states – Bulgaria, Greece and Slovenia. Such flexibility options are instrumental in achieving a secure, flexible, and sustainable grid that can handle supply-demand variability.