Vincenzo Croce, the BRIGHT project’s coordinator discussed on ENLIT, among other things, the concept and objectives of the project.
The interview:
Would you please describe in a few words the BRIGHT project?
Bright is promoting an ecosystem to promote users communities in DR programs, trading of energy and flexibility.
Which needs of the EU energy grid is it covering and how?
The increasing trend for larger penetration of intermittent RES (Renewable Energy Sources) has posing needs for flexibility to better balance supply and demand. Among the different options, DR (Demand Response) represents a viable option for providing a larger share of flexibility through the control of electricity consumption within end customer premises (a.k.a. load flexibility), either by time-scheduling or power modulating the loads.
Who is involved in the project?
BRIGHT involves organisations with complementary expertise from the research and industrial area across Europe. The project consortium
consists of 15 partners from 7 Countries (Italy, Belgium, Romania, Slovenia, The Netherlands, Greece, Estonia):
One Large Enterprise, Engineering (Ingegneria Informatica),
A variety of energy stakeholders, fully covering the energy value chain, including one of the largest EU-wise independent aggregator (CEN - Centrica Business Solutions), one supplier (WVT - Watt And Volt Anonimi Etairia Ekmetalleysis), one DSO (Distribution System Operator) (ASM Termi) as power network operator, one retailer/supplier/Balancing Responsible Party (SONCE) one ESCO & Local Energy Cooperative (DuCoop)
Industry: ISKRA as one of the largest providers of smart metering solutions in Netherlands and Germany;
Specialized SMEs (small and medium enterprises): Emotion (EMOT), a leading-edge EVs (electric vehicles) fleet solution provider, ComSensus (COM), a pioneering spin-off from JSI tailoring scalable near real time monitoring infrastructures for smart grids, SunContract (SUN), one of the most successful EU P2P DLT/Blockchain ICO-based platform solution providers, CyberEthicsLab (CEL), bringing cutting-edge know how on privacy, GDPR compliance and social assessment of technologies, and DOMX, an innovative company dealing with interoperable home automation solutions for smart electricity and gas heating
3 leading-edge Research & Academy Institutions (TNO - Netherlands Organization for Applied Natural Sciences Research, TUC – Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, IMEC - Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum)
one association of consumers, APC (Asociatia Pro Consumatori), which, as member of BEUC, the EU Association of Consumers, has access to many consumers all over Europe.
Who is the target audience of the project?
The target audience includes for sure the energy communities (Local, Virtual an on the move), but also prosumers through the consumers associations, local distributor system operators and aggregators.
One of the project’s objectives is to understand energy consumer behavior. Given the diversity of the continent’s various grids and consumer’s mentalities, how plausible is it and what are the main difficulties?
Social engagement framework is used to understand the overall behavior and increase the engagement. Blockchain is democratizing the process putting the power more on the prosumers side.
Which techs are you focusing on to advance your demand response strategy?
We are relying on BRIGHT toolset that is collecting many technologies ranging from Digital twins models, Community level Blockchain based Flexibility Marketplace (CBFM), Integration gateway for domestic devices monitoring and actuation.
Another objective of the project is to develop and validate innovative open cooperative sharing-economy local business models. Again, due to the diversities in EU, how plausible is it and what are the difficulties?
We have different pilots located in different regions trying to address different kind of communities, to gather diversity on user requirements. Business models was approached considering those different type of targets, communities (Local, virtual, on the move, hybrid).
What are we missing in Europe or what should we change when it comes to regulation? And here I intend both on a European (EU Commission) and a local (Local Authorities) level.
Regulation related to Energy community is evolving during last period; however, same regulatory aspects are not fully defined and some constraints are limiting the action of local communities. For example in terms of geographical limits that are defining the local community boundaries, or in terms of services that can be exploited by Local Energy community with limitations related to the grid topology.
