This open letter summarises the discussions held during of the workshop “Fostering user engagement for innovative demand response for effective flexibility” celebrated during the 10th edition of the Sustainable Places 2022 conference. This event was organised in a hybrid format in Nice, France, from the 6th September to 9th September 2022, in which the sister projects iFLEX, ACCEPT, HESTIA, SENDER, and ReDREAM participated. This open letter follows the format used by the workshop held in Sustainable places 2022 (SP2022): the questions were asked by the moderator and the answers were given by sister projects’ representatives, together summarising the collaborative work performed by the five projects.
Introduction
To facilitate the cross-exchange of knowledge between EU projects, improving the use of lessons learnt and enhancing the improvement of project results, five EU projects on demand-response (DR) and energy communities started to closely collaborate in April 2021. iFLEX (Intelligent Assistants for Flexibility Management), ACCEPT (ACtive Communities & Energy Prosumers for the energy Transition), HESTIA (Holistic dEmand response Services for European residenTIAl communities), SENDER (Sustainable Consumer engagement and demand response), and ReDREAM (REAL CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT THROUGH A NEW USER-CENTRIC ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPMENT FOR END-USERS’ASSETS IN A MULTI-MARKET SCENARIO) were all in their starting phase and their urgent and common challenge was related to the active participation of users in their projects. This open letter follows the format used by the workshop held in SP2022 (Sustainable Places 2022). The questions were asked by the moderator and the answers were given by sister projects’ representatives, together summarising the collaborative work performed by the five projects. Because of time restrictions, not all the projects’ representatives were able to reply to all the discussed themes, however this open letter represents the main aspects and activities performed that the representatives aimed to share with a wider public as lessons learnt in the pilot sites development. It specially focuses on publicly exchanging information, best practices and challenges identified during the different activities achieved, so that interested stakeholders could use it as “on the field” literature to be used in their projects.
Cite this article: Ospina Y, Aprà FM, Aggeli A et al. Lessons learnt during the workshop “Empowerment of citizens: fostering user engagement for innovative demand response for effective flexibility” [version 1; peer review: 3 approved with reservations]. Open Res Europe 2023, 3:1 (https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.15270.1)
About the authors
Yeimy Ospina, Fabio Maria Aprà, Aggeliki Aggeli, ROMAN TOMAŽIČ, ISMINI DIMITRIADOU, PABLO BARRACHINA, ARJEN SCHAMHART, BREFFNÍ LENNON, PAUL TOBIN, WILLIAM THRONDSEN, Carmen Valor, Juan Martino.