Consumer engagement

Throughout Europe, energy transition gives a growing place to sustainable energies meaning not only that technologies are more and more environmentally friendly but also that they aim to be adapted to their consumers. That is why, consumer engagement is needed from the very beginning of the energy solutions’ design, up to their implementation.

SENDER uses co-creation processes to develop consumer engagement, ensuring that customers become collaborators in the design of energy services. These co-creation mechanisms will be two-fold: co-creation steering groups and co-creation workshops.

• Co-creation steering groups (CCSG) will gather the main stakeholders of SENDER: technology and service providers, public regulators and end-users. These stakeholders will mainly represent the three demonstration sites chosen for the project: Alginet, Weiz and Otaniemi, and will be composed of both SENDER partners and external actors. The CCSG will gather several times during project to ensure partnership with and insight from stakeholders of all the targeted audience. These groups will also be involved in defining the use-cases of the SENDER solution later validated during the implementation.
  For more information on the co-creation steering group results, please visit our results section.

• Co-creation workshops (CCWS) will focus on the demand side and the definition of the purposes and use of the SENDER solution. One co-creation workshop will be organised in each of the demonstration sites, with local technology and service developers, energy companies and local end-users. For a better organisation of the meeting, they will all be led by the demonstration site partner and in the local language.
  For more information on the co-creation workshops, please visit our demonstration sites pages.

Demand response

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

A first step of consumer data collection will be implemented in the three demonstration areas. This will allow for a better understanding of the consumption patterns and the energy demand. To do so, the collected data will be processed, and typical consumption patterns will emerge. SENDER partners will mirror them through digital twins (DTs) based on artificial intelligence technologies to better understand the digital twins’ supply and demand characteristics.

The following figure details the interaction between the consortium partners to collect data, create the digital twins and optimise how the network can provide more sustainable energy to satisfy the energy demand.

Schematics from the proposal

The three SENDER demonstration sites were chosen for their differences in location, population, purpose, societal characteristics, etc. and are expected to create very specific consumer patterns and digital twins. This way, the SENDER methodology for consumer engagement to co-design the solutions can be tested in different contexts. The outcome methodology and demonstrators’ results will be provided in M48 and a replication booklet will be published containing all the public results and outcomes to foster the replication of the SENDER solution.

For more detailed information on the project, please visit the SENDER project section.