OPEN4CEC is an open and collaborative platform based on microservices to support sustainable transition towards Citizen Energy Communities (CEC). The platform is available for testing at: http://ase.open4cec.eu
The target users of OPEN4CEC are the Citizen Energy Communities and its members: urban consumers and prosumers, administrative buildings, local business entities, municipalities, storage facilities, EV charging stations, distributed generation and storage units, aggregators.
OPEN4CEC provides applications for:
- Community members – Demand Side Management, Demand Response, load optimization, monitoring and control of smart appliances
- Distributed Generation & Storage – small/medium generation based on renewables and storage, including prosumers, generation forecast and optimization, sizing storage, Electric Vehicles (EV) management
- Citizen Energy Communities – business models for aggregators, local energy/flexibility markets, auctions, smart contracts and settlement.
OPEN4CEC is scalable and tailored to cope with the diversity of CEC and various developing stages in terms of Demand Side Management, regulatory framework, regional, economic and social awareness, technological implementation (smart metering), privacy and cybersecurity challenges and barriers.
For modularity and scalability, several layers are included in OPEN4CEC:
- Layer 1 – Awareness, Acceptance & Adoption of Energy Communities.
- Layer 2 – Load Control, Optimization & Analytics for members of the Energy Communities.
- Layer 3 – Predictive & Proactive support for Distributed Generation & Storage.
- Layer 4 – Market trading & Business models for Citizen Energy Communities.
Due to its open character, OPEN4CEC will increase the speed of digital transformation in energy and stimulate innovation. It will bring together heterogenous stakeholders such as energy service providers, grid operators, industry, SME, start-ups or highly motivated individuals to trade using innovative energy business solutions.
As novelty and original contributions, the project proposes digital solutions that integrate Internet of Things (IoT), data and models (decision theory in resource allocation, linear programming, Artificial Intelligence, heuristic models) into a Microservice-based Reference Architecture (MRA) to support the sustainability and replicability of Energy Communities.
OPEN4CEC supports Energy Communities and civil society as it brings significant economic, environmental impact and social benefits, providing means to interact and trade on a decentralized trustable platform.