What is eDREAM?
eDREAM – Enabling New Tehnologies for Demand Response Descentralized Validation using Blockchain – H2020 project
eDREAM aims to the transfiguration of traditional market approaches and smart grid operations into novel decentralized and community-driven energy systems fully exploring local capacities, constraints and Virtual Power Plants-oriented optimization in terms of local and secure grid nodes stabilization.
Context
In a fast evolving and competitive global landscape, Europe needs to develop and mature the next generation of competitive technologies and services for the electricity distribution grid at medium and low voltage levels, which are clearly going beyond the state of the art and will be ready to integrate the market in five to ten years’ time.
Demand side response (DSR) is widely recognised as a key element in the development of the future optimised, smart grid, incorporating a wide range of both centralised and distributed renewable and conventional power sources.
Challenge
Despite the many advantages of Demand Response applications as well as the promising results of the successful deployment of Demand Side Response there are very few examples of the successful deployment of DSR technologies that consider Virtual Power Plants as well as decentralized approaches towards achieving a reduction in peak grid demand and real savings for final consumers.
In Europe, Demand Response programs are still in their infancy. In this new era for Demand Response in Europe, Balancing Responsible Partners (BRPs) including aggregators, utilities and retailers appear to be threatened from the side-effects of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) integration in the grid on traditional grid-related economics. Vital requirements are still missing, as fundamental technical descriptions are not being followed.
Renewable Energy Sources (RES) are significantly impacting the power infrastructure. The share of RES in the EU power generation mix grew from 13% in 1990 to about 20% in 2010, and will exceed EU 20-20-20 targets, reaching as much as 50% by 2030 with a significant contribution from variable sources.
As well, the share of electricity as a percentage of total energy consumption is expected to rise due to an increasing number of electrical appliances and an increase in the penetration of heat pumps and electric vehicles (EV). The number of EV model launches rose to 15 in 2015 and annual sales of plug-in EVs are expected to grow by 400% by 2023.
This can be problematic when local distribution networks and metering systems cannot accommodate reverse flows.
Solution
The concept is in line with the recommendations recently reported by European Commission in respect to Demand Response status in several Member states, in which eDREAM foresees to play pioneer role in:
- Ensuring a smooth transition towards a novel market scheme.
- Enabling consumers/prosumers to effectively participate in community-based virtual power plants concepts, allowing from one hand aggregators to maximize the group’s joint potential as well as the possibility for direct trading of the aggregated load through new business/financial models.
- Provisioning next generation consumption/production forecasting techniques through the research of scalable deep learning methods that fully enable the provision of services related to: micro-batch analysis including stream analytics for trend analysis, and novel graph analytics toolkit to improve day-ahead and long-term planning of DR programs.
Impact
