About the project
The goal of I-GReta is to develop solutions for planning and operation of highly flexible energy systems benefitting from storage capacities. These will be capable of integrating high shares of renewables in regional and local energy networks through integrated demand flexibility and forecasting on building level as well as large-scale optimization-based control of electrical, heating and cooling consumption.
The consortium intends to build a real-world digitalized and decentralized energy system. I-GReta will connect 5 trial sites in 4 countries via a professional ICT platform benefitting from FIWARE components. Occupants, owners and system operators as key need owners will participate and assess the operation of the respective systems in a Virtual Smart Grid (VSG) based on the platform. A key use case will be the trading of storage capacities via the platform. Individual storage solutions will additionally provide high value and immense impact potential in the local perspective.
Objectives and goals
Goal 1: Design and develop a TRL7 prototype of an inter-regional energy system demonstrating a possible way to successfully transform our energy systems towards human-centred and renewable, service-oriented energy supply.
Goal 2: Achieve market impact by creating business models and replicability guidelines leveraging use of RES while answering different actors’ needs, putting the customer at the center.
Objective 1: Understand needs by different need owners Recognise relevant stakeholders and needs with the details of needs, motivations and added values regarding future energy systems.
Objective 2: Support a secure and democratic energy supply as pillar of modern societies. Our human-centric solution will allow each user, regardless of income or preferences to interact with the energy system and thus contribute to a sustainable and affordable energy supply that enables more desirable and flexible indoor climate conditions. In addition, the need for preserving the users’ privacy will be respected by the design of the solutions, decoupling the customer requirements from higher layers in the architecture.
Objective 3: Provide the technology to handle required data for achieving the described goals. In order to allow the envisioned high shares of RES and still guarantee a secure and affordable supply, regions should exchange energy and the built environment should provide as much load shifting flexibility as possible. Both require massive amounts of data and interoperable systems. We therefore design and implement a fully scalable ICT platform based on the results of previous and ongoing research projects that will allow each company and individual user to provide this flexibility.
Objective 4: Demonstrate operational solution and derive impact-creating guidelines and business models. The consortium consists of research institutions, an energy utility company and energy service providers that will cooperate in order to integrate the local sites into the virtually interconnected energy system, showing opportunities for regional development in a diversity of the demonstration sites. Therefore, we are able to cover all dimensions of integration. The major objective of the industrial partners is to create high impact and derive technical solutions and business models that will lead to wide-spread commercialization of the new services in the very close future.