SENDER: Revolutionizing the Energy Grid for a Greener Tomorrow

Throughout Europe, the energy transition is placing increasing emphasis on sustainable energies, which means not only that technologies are becoming increasingly environmentally friendly, but also that they aim to adapt to consumers. This is why consumer involvement is necessary from the very beginning of the design of energy solutions, right through to their implementation.

SENDER uses co-creation processes to develop consumer engagement, ensuring that they become collaborators in the design of sustainable energy services:

1. Co-Creation Steering Groups (CCSG) to gather the main stakeholders (both internal and external) in the 3 pilot sites
2. Co-Creation WorkShops (CCWS) to focus on the demand side and the definition of the purposes and use of the SENDER solution

The SENDER Smart Box will allow the consumer to gain control over the consumption and become a “Prosumer”.

In order to boost proactiveness and secure long-term participation, consumers will be rewarded with a customable package solution: the Smart home security & safety.

This will include:

• Home access control
• Assisted living, allowing to send a warning signal to neighbours in case of emergency
• And convenience system, allowing distance control of the house

 In addition, end-users will be rewarded for the flexibility they provide.

SENDER will turn the Demand/Response scheme from a reactive to a proactive system by actively engaging with consumers and efficiently managing the power grid.

For more information on the co-creation steering group results, please visit our results section.

To achieve a sustainable future, a transition away from the thermal generation. However, a number of challenges remain in the way of that transition. To manage highly distributed renewable energy generation, grid operators require more storage capacity  and what is called flexibility.

 Flexibility is the way the grid can manage a mismatch between supply and demand of energy at a given moment until equilibrium is reached again. 

But ensuring the balance becomes more complicated when renewable energies are added,  as their energy production is not constant in time.

So how can we optimize the introduction of renewable energy in the power grid while securing its efficiency and sustainability?

Consumers are at the core of the energy system and drive energy demand. They are the key players that can help with this challenge. 

Consumers can provide flexibility to the grid through demand-response. 

For instance, by shifting a specific electricity consumption to a later time during the day, when the pressure on the power grid is lower.

10 types of stakeholders implicated in the co-construction activities through co-created strategies for consumers’ proactive demand response mechanisms

In recent years, limited progress has been made to include consumers in demand response solutions development, In particular for individual households demand response. The main reason for this is the rigid structure of current price-based and incentive-based demand response mechanisms. Very few flexibility is allowed on the grids and consumers are not engaged to participate in the development of the solutions. That is why, consumer engagement is one of the main issues of demand response in Europe and why SENDER makes it a priority.

In SENDER, consumer engagement is at different stages:

• During the project: consumers are placed at the heart of the specifications, design and development (WP2-4) through co-creation activities, and the specifically developed energy services will include economic and non-financial incentives;
• After the end of the project, in the long term: a “package” of services will provide additional value for the consumers in the fields of home convenience, assisted living and home security.

In SENDER, the co-creation mechanisms aim also to bridge the gap between technology providers and consumers and thus the co-creation activities involve a wide variety of actors. The steering groups and workshops will be composed of professionals of the energy field (DSOs, suppliers, aggregators, energy cooperatives, etc.) but also local and individual actors (consumer associations, end-users, etc.).

Objective’s indicators: Number of stakeholders involved in each co-construction workshop, Percentage of contacted consumers that finally participate in the pilot.

20% kWh of flexibility per households per year
through digital representations of consumers’ behaviours to identify and exploit their flexibility potential

The consumer segmentations identified during the first steps of WP5 & WP6 will need to be digitally reproduced to help predict the energy demand from the selected consumers. The digital representations of the consumer segmentations are called digital twins. The data of these digital twins can be aggregated to create a complete view of the different consumers’ interaction with the network. Based on this data aggregation (WP5), energy services actors (e.g. grid operators, aggregators, energy cooperatives, energy communities) will be able to better identify, exploit and commercialise the flexibility potential of consumers’ behaviours. This will lead to an optimised grid management, a higher degree of RES integration and reduced downward regulation of RES sources.

Objective’s indicators: Increase in controlled flexible power demand (in % of installed flexible demand), amount of flexibility provided per household and year (in kWh)

2 regulatory documents for new legal frameworks
that accelerate and facilitate the implementation of consumer-based Demand Response technologies

Currently, regulatory protections for consumers are often barriers to the implementation of innovative solutions not yet taken into account by the regulation framework. In the electricity sector for instance, the implementation of smart meters raised a lot of questions related to data acquisition, usage, and benefits for consumers.

In SENDER, the main activities are based on the use of individual private data to identify behavioural patterns of individuals. Given the sensitivity of data collection and analysis, potential regulatory and legal barriers can be critical to the project’s implementation and replicability. That is why, SENDER will analyse existing legislation/regulation (WP4) to outline proposal designs to the co-creation groups. Moreover, the SENDER consortium will study the differences of legislation regarding project-critical issues in the countries of the consortium and pilot project participants. Based on this analysis, the project will provide recommendations to public bodies in order to facilitate the harmonisation and implementation of sustainable actions by consumers.

Objective’s indicators: Publication of documents giving recommendations to the EU parliament group working on energy; Number of documents for the regulatory authorities in each country with demonstration site.

5 dissemination events

Many highly relevant project results that support sustainability, climate protection and the energy turnaround do not receive the required stakeholder attention to make a societal impact expected in the long term.

SENDER relies on strong communication and dissemination activities implemented in WP9 to ensure a wide outreach. Also, SENDER will build on the results of previous H2020 projects, directly involving solution developers as partners, and co-constructing the solution with the consumers. This way, long-lasting solutions can be implemented during the project. Finally, a replication plan and an exploitation roadmap will be elaborated in WP8 to study the replication potential of the solution in other sites, supported by the commercial interest of involved partners.

Objective’s indicators: dissemination events amongst the scientific community, publications in academic/scientific journals, Number of visitors to the website per year.

SENDER’s main objective is to develop innovative strategies to better engage consumers in demand response mechanisms, which is central to the Clean Energy Package and puts the consumer at the centre of the electricity market. It is the first step towards an increase of the use of DR across the European energy system. This will be validated through:

• the development of co-creation processes with consumers in WP2
• the validation of the SENDER solution through three demonstration sites in WP7
• a wide-spread implementation throughout Europe through dissemination activities in WP9
• a strong replication plan in WP8

By doing a demonstration in three demonstration sites, with highly different cultures, relation to energy, climatic conditions, energy networks conditions, economic situations and more, SENDER will strongly increase the replicability potential of the solution. Indeed, such variety allows to think that similar countries could easily be considered for replication, such as Portugal, Italy, Germany, Slovenia, Sweden, Norway for instance.

To measure the real impact of SENDER in terms of replicability in the EU demand response field, the following key performance indicators will be monitored throughout the project:

1.1 Number of countries in which the project implements demand response pilots
1.2 Number of EU countries with replication potential

In terms of technology improvement and increased sustainability, SENDER will:

• demonstrate and improve viability of innovative energy services by developing innovative consumer engagement strategies and integrating non-energy related services into a package application for consumers
• largely increase the viability of demand response for households to fit the consumers’ identified requirements in WP2
• ensure that the solutions proposed will take into consideration end-users needs, doubts and other issues related to its use
• prepare for the SENDER solution’s large-scale replication through best practices and replication toolbox publication
• develop innovative business models that share profits between consumers and grid operators.

To measure the real impact of SENDER in terms of services and replication potential, the following key performance indicators will be monitored throughout the project:

3.1 Number of consumer engagement strategies developed
3.2 Long-term engagement of consumers during the project
3.3 Increase profitability for consumers translating in a decrease of their energy bills (decrease of energy bill for a DR consumer)
3.4 Increase profitability for DSOs by increasing the number of potential DR clients (increase of clients in DR in the next 5 years)

The reliability of the SENDER innovative energy services is guaranteed by a step-by-step development and implementation process: the solutions will be first simulated, then physically tested in lab with a simulated environment and finally implemented in the households.

Moreover, the whole methodology of co-creation of the solution with the consumers is specifically meant to propose solutions that are viable for the consumers, and which propose appropriate incentives.

Finally, the project will build upon numerous previous projects that partners have participated in, learning from them and putting in place the best practices for an efficient implementation. Based on the definition of use cases during the co-creation process (WP2 & 3) a regulatory and policy analysis will identify potential barriers and obstacles to the implementation of the specified solution (WP8). The demonstration site experiences will also be critically evaluated and, leading if relevant to further SENDER product adjustments prior to the preparation of a large-scale replication by WP8.

To measure the real impact of SENDER in terms of reliability of the solutions, the following key performance indicators will be monitored throughout the project:

5.1 Number of innovative services
5.2 Number of best practices developed
5.3 Number of projects SENDER will build upon
5.4 Time of tests before implementation (in months)
5.5 Number of SENDER uptakes by energy cooperatives

The increase of data protection and privacy for customer is a cross-cutting priority of the SENDER project. Developing a digital twin technology that builds on the analysis and forecast of customer patterns to leverage demand-side flexibility potential is not currently done in the energy domain. Therefore, the consortium foresees to run two internal project workshops during the SENDER development phase to discuss with the involved partners how to comply with existing regulation (e.g. EU GDPR). This will require the integration of experts from WP4-6.

In addition, the development of innovative strategies to better engage consumers in demand response mechanisms first and foremost requires their trust. To do so, dissemination activities will be used towards the consumers to openly inform on the data privacy and security measures in the SENDER solution. This will not only be done by means of presentation in the co-creation steering group (WP2), but also by dedicated, written briefings to all customers at the demonstration sites (WP7).

Finally, the consortium expects that especially the experiences during the demonstration phase (WP7) and the analysis of related obstacles (WP8) will lead to policy recommendations on the political and regulatory framework design for specific data privacy and security standards.

To measure the real impact of SENDER in terms of data protection and privacy, the following key performance indicators will be monitored throughout the project:

7.1 Number of internal workshops to integrate data privacy and protection into the SENDER system design
7.2 Data protection and privacy communication briefings to consumers
7.3 Number of policy recommendations documents on data privacy and standardisation requirements
7.4 Number of breaks to simulated hacking attacks

The co-creation process with local communities in combination with the implementation of the SENDER box supports the provision of flexibility to the grid and increases the use of renewable energies in various ways:

• SENDER supports the EU directive on use of energy from renewable sources. With the SENDER solution, a higher potential of local self-consumption of renewable energies is possible, especially with multiple prosumers, and forecasting and demand response demand response activities are optimised.
• SENDER facilitates the development of digital twins to improve the demand-side flexibility potential by optimizing demand-response, peer-to-peer trading and managing different storage systems (battery storage, power-to-heat, vehicle to grid, etc.).
• The focus being on the households and their wide variety of energy loads will ensure that a maximum amount of flexibility will be sought out. The technological groundwork is done by WP6 and the impact is achieved by demonstrating and validating the solution on three pilot sites in WP7.
• SENDER will include the sustainable roll-out of the solution with a strong replication plan through WP8 and WP9.

To measure the real impact of SENDER in terms of flexibility to the grid, the following key performance indicators will be monitored throughout the project:

9.1 Percentage of power subscription that can be mobilised for flexibility per households (up to)
9.2 Percentage of energy consumption that will be mobilised for flexibility per households in the project
9.3 Number of households targeted in the project
9.4 Number of households targeted 5 years after the end of the project

By bringing a fair share of the benefits to the consumer with monetary compensation, the solution will reduce the share of the household budgets dedicated to energy. The smart water heating system included in the SENDER solution allows to heat less water and thus to decrease energy consumption for heating water. All this will participate in reducing energy poverty.

The project and the solution will create new jobs. First with the work necessary during the project, on the demonstration sites for example but mostly in the long run by developing a new market where companies will be interested to be involved.