Mahdollistamme kestävää tulevaisuutta

SENDER: Vallankumouksellinen sähköverkko vihreämpää huomista varten

SENDER edistää siirtymää uusiutuvaan energiaan, halliten vaihtelevuutta ja huipputehon tarvetta luodakseen tehokkaamman ja kestävämmän sähköverkon.

MEIDÄN VISIOMME

Haasteiden voittaminen siirtymässä uusiutuvaan energiaan

Kestävän tulevaisuuden saavuttamiseksi on välttämätöntä siirtyä fossiilisista polttoaineista uusiutuvaan energiaan. Tämä siirtymä on kuitenkin haastavaa, sillä uusiutuvan energian tuotanto vaihtelee esimerkiksi tuulen ja päivänvalon mukaan, ja huippukulutuksen ajat osuvat usein yksiin vähäisen uusiutuvan tuotannon kanssa. Verkon operaattoreiden on hallittava tätä vaihtelua rajallisten varastointimahdollisuuksien ja joustavuuden avulla, mikä tarkoittaa, että tarjonta ja kysyntä on tasapainotettava joko varastoimalla ylimääräistä energiaa tai vähentämällä kulutusta. Vaihtelevien uusiutuvien energialähteiden integrointi lisää tämän tehtävän monimutkaisuutta. Haasteena on optimoida tämä integrointi tehokkuuden ja kestävyyden varmistamiseksi sähköverkossa.

Discover in video how the SENDER project will solve this issue ↓

SENDER ottaa huomioon, että kuluttajat/tuotantokuluttajat ovat energiamarkkinoiden ytimessä, ja osallistaa heidät suoraan yhteissuunnitteluprosessiin muiden energialan toimijoiden kanssa proaktiivisten kysynnänhallintamekanismien suunnittelussa, kehittämisessä ja käytössä. Nämä mekanismit yhdistetään poikkisektoraalisiin ja lisäarvoa tuottaviin palveluihin, jotka määritellään kuluttajien/prosumereiden mieltymysten mukaan.

SENDER siirtää kysynnänhallinnan reaktiivisesta proaktiiviseen lähestymistapaan..

Projektin tulokset parantavat jakeluverkkojen tehokkuutta/isännöintikapasiteettia, joita verkko-operaattorit hallinnoivat, parantamalla kuormitustarkennusten laatua ja tarjoamalla pääsyn kuormitusjoustoon, mikä mahdollistaa taajuusvakautuksen, ruuhkamanagementin ja uusiutuvien energialähteiden (RES) integroinnin parantamisen. Lisäksi joustavuuspotentiaalin rahallistaminen mahdollistetaan osallistumalla tasapainotus/sääntelyvoimamarkkinoille.

SENDER Concepts

Consumer engagement

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.

Demand response

Sustainable demand response mechanisms aim to use renewable energies to meet the energy consumption of the target population. In the case of SENDER, the focus is on demand response for individual households, and in particular on the development of applications for proactive demand response, home automation, convenience and security.

A first stage of consumer data collection will be implemented in the three demonstration zones. This will provide a better understanding of consumption patterns and energy demand. To this end, the data collected will be processed and typical consumption patterns will emerge. The SENDER partners will reproduce these through digital twins (DTs) based on artificial intelligence technologies to better understand the supply and demand characteristics of the digital twins.

Flexibility

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.

 

 

SENDER Smartbox

SENDER will co-develop the next generation of integrated energy service applications for demand-response management, tailored to end users’ needs and preferences, and will test them in three pilot sites. 

To allow customers to provide flexibility, SENDER partners will develop a Smart box  which will be installed in the households of the pilot sites to gather data on their tenants’ energy consumption habits. 

Data security and privacy is a key part of the project to make sure consumers can trust the system. 

Data collection will include information such as temperature, luminance and air quality. 

All this data will be analysed by a designed algorithm able to provide extremely detailed projections of power demand, thus, making it easier for the grid operators to adapt their response in advance.

In addition, the data collected will be used to create Digital Twins which will be capable of mirroring consumers’ behaviour. 

Digital Twins are the key to test the replicability of the project outside the pilot sites and ensure its long-term potential.

Objectives

Innovative strategies to co-create demand response mechanisms with consumers

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.

Innovative models to identify consumer patterns and forecast consumption (energy demand)

10% improvement in load forecast errors through innovative models to identify consumer patterns and forecast consumption

Digital technologies and artificial intelligence are more and more developed and very widely used to forecast the availability of resources (e.g. daily or hourly solar and wind characteristics at a specific location to predict the availability of solar and wind-based renewable energy). This improvement of the technology increases the performance and decreases the costs. However, in terms of demand response, it is mostly happening in one way: grid and market operators send signals to the consumers which can react.

In SENDER, innovative models aim to develop a pro-active demand response. To do so, consumer patterns (WP5 & WP6) need to be identified along with their behaviours: sensors, IoT components, machine learning and AI algorithms will be used to pro-actively identify these patterns and behaviours via data collection and analysis.

Social science techniques will allow to define the consumer segmentations and relevant target groups for the project (e.g. based on gender, incomes, culture, location, type of house). The SENDER partners will thus better understand the different consumer needs and demand patterns to forecast these different energy loads and optimise the response using renewable energies.

Objective’s indicators: Relative improvement of load forecast errors/deviations compared to the State of the Art (in %).

 

Digital twins to improve flexibility potential of the households

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)

Innovative business model that shares profits between consumers and grid operators

A higher profit share distributed to consumers
through a business model that shares profits between consumers and grid operators

Currently, demand response projects are mostly built from the grid operator/DSO perspective. This leads to a one-sided distribution of the economic benefits of demand-response the grid operator/DSO and to a lack of consumers engagement, in the short- and long-term.

SENDER aims to bring a fair share of the project solutions´ benefits to the consumer/prosumer. This is most important to involve the consumer in these new mechanisms and appropriately shows that the consumer has a pro-active role at the heart of the energy market. Therefore, a dedicated business model will be developed (WP8) in co-creation with relevant actors and supported by the co-creation steering group to share fairly the profits from demand response.

Objective’s indicators: User acceptance of new business model proposals measured by number of SENDER pilot implementation subscribers; economic incentives proposed to consumers (€/kWh of flexibility provided)

 

New legal and regulatory framework that accelerates and facilitates the implementation of consumer-based DR technologies

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.

Demonstration on 3 sites of the SENDER solution

400 households in the 3 demonstration sites
based in Spain, Austria and Finland

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)

Sustainable solution with strong dissemination activities and replication plan

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.

 

Strong cooperation with other relevant EU projects and tackle cross-cutting issues

5 initiatives in synergy with other related EU projects
to tackle cross-cutting issues and foster cooperation with other relevant EU projects

The co-creation process and consumer engagement applied in SENDER are based on state-of-the-art models for innovation and technology development. The applied models are mostly based on social sciences and humanities research and attend to issues of inclusion – such as gender – in technology and service development.

These cross-cutting issues will be tackled in the project as the partners will directly work on these topics to implement them into SENDER. In addition, SENDER will organise collaborations (WP8 & WP9) with other projects such as INTERRFACE and COORDINET supported under the topic LC-SC3-ES-5-2018-2020 that approach the challenge more from a grid perspective while SENDER focuses on the consumers’ perspective. Through the BRIDGE initiative, SENDER also aims for a strong collaboration with relevant projects and whom to establish collaborations with to create beneficial synergies for all projects.

Objective’s indicators: number of projects to collaborate with, number of joint events organised.

Activities

Project Management
Lead: SIN

Co-creation process implementation
Lead: NTNU

Specification of the pro-active demand response system
Lead: HPT

Policies, regulations, cyber security and data protection
Lead: TRIALOG

Consumer patterns’ modelling
Lead: NTNU

Technological development
Lead: HPT

Demonstration
Lead: ECO

Business model, exploitation and roadmap
Lead: SIN

Communication, dissemination and networking activities
Lead: EQY

Ethic requirements
Lead: SIN

EXPECTED IMPACTS

The following section presents the main expected impacts from the SENDER project, how they are implemented and what indicators will be monitored to ensure a proper execution of the activities during the project.

Increased use of demand response across the European energy system

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

Increased number and types of consumers engaged in demand-response across Europe

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

Demonstrated innovative energy services, with best practices and effective incentives to help replicability at large scale

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)

Increased uptake of services that combine energy efficiency with other energy services, technologies and non-energy benefits

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

Increased reliability and accessibility of innovative energy services

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

Increased predictability of consumption patterns and consumer behaviour

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

Increased data protection and privacy for customers

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

Improved modelling of the flexibility drivers from the new energy services

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

Increased share of energy or power that can be mobilised to provide flexibility to the grid and increase the use of renewable energies.

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

Reduce carbon emission

Bringing flexibility to the grid will reduce carbon emission in three ways:

  1. by reducing consumption at peak hours, this will allow the grid operators not to start new energy sources such as fossil fuel power plants;
  2. because bringing flexibility to the grid will allow a better integration of the renewable energy sources which reduces carbon emission;
  3. as the solution provided in SENDER will allow consumers to reduce their energy consumption, which participates in reducing the overall carbon emissions.
Fight energy poverty

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.

Create new jobs

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.

Increase EU technological competitivity

The research and development tools produced in the project will lead to at least 3 new patents and more than 10 scientific articles that will strongly participate to the economic and academic leadership of EU in the field of smart homes and DR associated services.

Consortium

BRIDGE initiative

BRIDGE is a cooperation group involving 155 projects in total (among which 97 are ongoing and 58 ended as of 1st of July 2023) involving 1510 organisations from 39 countries for a total accumulated EC funding to all projects of 1303 M€ in the areas of Smart Grid, Energy Storage, Islands, and Digitalisation funded under the Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe program over the last 8 years (2015-2023). 

The BRIDGE process fosters continuous knowledge sharing amongst projects thus allowing them to deliver conclusions and recommendations about the future exploitation of the project results, with a single voice, through four different Working Groups representing the main areas of interest:

  • Data management
  • Business models
  • Regulations Consumer
  • and Citizen engagement

What is Horizon 2020 ?

In 2011 the EU Heads of State and Government called on the European Commission to bring together all of the previous EU’s research and innovation funding private investment that this money will attract.

Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private investment that this money will attract.

It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market.

 

 

Funding available

Billion €

in years (2014 to 2020)

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Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe’s global competitiveness.

Seen as a means to drive economic growth and create jobs, Horizon 2020 has the political backing of Europe’s leaders and the Members of the European Parliament. They agreed that research is an investment in our future and so put it at the heart of the EU’s blueprint for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and jobs.

By coupling research and innovation, Horizon 2020 is helping to achieve this with its emphasis on excellent science, industrial leadership and tackling societal challenges. The goal is to ensure Europe produces world-class science, removes barriers to innovationand makes it easier for the public and private sectors to work together in delivering innovation.

Horizon 2020 is open to everyone, with a simple structure that reduces red tape and time so participants can focus on what is really important. This approach makes sure new projects get off the ground quickly – and achieve results faster.

The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation will be complemented by further measures to complete and further develop the European Research Area. These measures will aim at breaking down barriers to create a genuine single market for knowledge, research and innovation.

Find out about the Horizon 2020 budget and also what we can tell you about the popularity of the programme, the success of SMEs, the degree to which the programme has attracted newcomers – both as participants and as expert evaluators – and the proportion of women experts? Answers below!

 

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The brochure “Horizon 2020 In Full Swing -Three Years On – Key facts and figures 2014-2016” (PDF 3,9 MB) provides a snapshot of the programme’s main achievements, taking into account more than 300 calls for proposals. For the first time, some early trends can be glimpsed from the year-on-year evolution of key monitoring data such as success rates, SME participation, and project evaluation.

For further monitoring data, you can consult the Horizon 2020 interactive Dashboard.

From https://ec.europa.eu/info/designing-next-research-and-innovation-framework-programme/what-shapes-next-framework-programme_en

Research & Innovation programme

Billion €

The Commission has published its proposal for Horizon Europe, an ambitious €100 billion research and innovation programme that will succeed Horizon 2020.

The proposal was made as part of the EU’s proposal for the next EU long-term budget, the multiannual financial framework (MFF).

Various building blocks were taken into account including the interim evaluation of Horizon 2020, the Lab-Fab-App report (informally the Lamy report), foresight studies and various other reports.

Legal texts, factsheets and video

Horizon Europe will incorporate policy missions to ensure the effectiveness of research and innovation funding by pursuing clearly defined target. The Commission has engaged policy experts to develop studies, case studies and reports on how a mission-oriented policy approach will work.