Expected Impacts

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

SENDER aims to increase the number of consumers engaged in demand-response across Europe by setting-up three demonstration sites in Austria, Finland and Spain. Consumers will also be implicated throughout the project in:

• WP2 with the implementation of the co-creation process
• WP3 with the engagement of consumers that were previously using smart home solutions into demand response activities.
• WP7 with the practical implementation, demonstration, analysis and development of recommendations based on the demonstration site experiences of consumers.

Currently, demand response solutions mainly concerns highly energy intensive industries using a lot of power, because the load shifting of such few actors has a strong impact on the grid. However, in SENDER the focus will be on households and bringing this new category of load into the demand response market and not as a homogeneous new type of consumers, but as a multitude. Indeed, consumers will be segmented in at least 8 different categories based on socio-economic and cultural factors which would represent different types of consumers. This approach aims to ensure that the consumer engagement methods and the services proposed will be tailored to each segment, in order to increase the efficiency of the implementation.

To measure the real impact of SENDER in terms of number and types of consumers involved in demand response, the following key performance indicators will be monitored throughout the project:

2.1 Number of different consumer segments
2.2 Number of households engaged in demand-response in Spain
2.3 Number of households engaged in demand-response in Austria
2.4 Number of households engaged in demand-response in Finland

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)

SENDER will develop a customisable, user-specific home automation product. This product will combine the demand response services with energy efficiency, comfort, electric vehicle management, and non-energy services which will be specified in WP3 but could include health, fire alarm, security, etc.

Furthermore, innovative combinations of energy efficiency related services with developing technologies are reflected by the AI-based analysis of consumer patterns to increase the consumption forecast quality and the development of a digital twin of consumers within WP5. An initial uptake of energy services will be provided by the implementation of the SENDER innovations at three demonstration sites in WP7; a large-scale roll-out will be prepared by WP8.

To measure the real impact of SENDER in terms of multi-faceted energy services, the following key performance indicators will be monitored throughout the project:

4.1 Percentage of unused services in the package
4.2 Number of energy related services included in the package
4.3 Number of non-energy related services included in the package
4.4 Change rate from other services (e.g. smart home solutions) to SENDER

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

SENDER focuses on developing new models to identify consumer patterns and improve forecast consumption. Besides the technological measures to improve the predictability, SENDER builds new legal and regulatory frameworks that facilitate the implementation of consumer-based demand response technologies. Data gathered during the project will complement these patterns and validate or improve them in different steps:

• WP5 will use social science approaches to define consumer patterns and tailored DR schemes. These activities are the basis for the development of digital twins of consumers.
• WP5 will also improve the predictability of consumer behaviour by differentiating various consumer segments in the energy products and services. This segmentation approach will make it possible to model what drives the different goods and services demand and understanding how different factors can influence these demands.
• WP6 will complete this approach with state-of-the-art flexibility provision and new innovative statistical approach.

In SENDER in general, the collaboration between social sciences and innovative technologies based on data collection for consumer behaviour predictability, will contribute to both disciplines and increase the current knowledge and predictability capacity.

To measure the real impact of SENDER in terms of predictability of consumer patterns and behaviours, the following key performance indicators will be monitored throughout the project:

6.1 Consumers patterns detected and modelled
6.2 Number of social science articles
6.3 Average reduction of errors on prediction (compared to state-of-the-art)
6.4 Number of forecast technology articles

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

SENDER proposal aims to develop a consumer digital twin to better understand consumer behaviours and assess the flexibility potential from the energy demand side. To this extent, several innovations will be brought:

• The Vlab developed in WP3 will allow to simulate the different relations between the systems and aggregate the flexibility potential of the different services proposed.
• Existing and previously developed demand response, peer-to-peer flexibility trading and storage optimisation tools will also be optimised within WP6. The results of this optimisation process and its outcome, which is an improved modelling of flexibility levers from the new energy services, will be integrated into a package solution and lab tested.
• WP7 foresees the use of the modelled flexibility drives at the three demonstration sites.
• The final exploitation of the flexibility-related components of the SENDER solution as well as its post-project exploitation approach is to be outlined within WP8.

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

8.1 Number of digital twin tests
8.2 Number of DR services considered

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