Horizon Energy: REScoopVPP - Smart Building Ecosystem for Energy Communities

The REScoopVPP project has gathered front-runner energy communities to create the most advanced community-driven smart building ecosystem for energy communities. The ecosystem consists of a Community-driven Flexibility Box (COFYbox) acting as smart home controller, and a set of online community tools called COFYcloud to support energy services by the community. Community tools enable energy communities to become real-time asset operators by employing demand and production forecasting algorithms, a dynamic pricing module for automated price-based control and an Open Automated Demand Response-based explicit demand-response solution to force control in case the grid needs support.

The enabled services range from self-consumption optimisation to explicit demand response, including implicit demand response and offtake capacity optimisation. The REScoopVPP solutions underwent a large-scale experimentation in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, and the UK.

Results:

• REScoopVPP managed to issue a set of modular products for energy communities to better operate real-time data that have been directly used by cooperative partners and beyond. Moreover it paved the way towards long-term collaboration among cooperatives and energy communities on digital tools.
• The COFYbox is the first truly open and collaborative building controller, based on existing open-source home automation technology, the so-called Home Assistant. A COFYbox is based on off-the-shelf products and is available for everyone to use.
• New integrations of domestic equipment were made to complement the 2500+ existing ones and include major appliances (inverters, heat pumps, EV chargers, etc.).
• A set of open source tools have been released to run the COFYbox and COFYcloud services, such as “open COFYbox” the Open source version of the COFYbox code, or “COFYbox Balena” the appliance fleet management software using Balena. These tools are listed on our REScode platform (code.rescoop.eu).
• The “enda” forecasting algorithms for consumption and production have been completed and implemented at retailer partners within the project and beyond.
• Open source results have been made available on the REScode platform  (code.rescoop.eu) together with other open source projects.
• Energy communities within the project have made substantial progress on flexibility services:  Enercoop became a Balance Responsible Party during their project; Ecopower started their dynamic tariff experiment right after;  Som Energia is studying becoming an aggregator; Bürgerwerke is assessing a combined solar farm and storage installation through which they could offer flexibility.
• Collaboration between energy communities on grassroots digital tools for the energy transition have been initiated leading to mutual support on domestic appliance control, forecasting tools and customer enterprises resources planning.

More information:

• CORDIS project factsheet: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/893240
• Website: https://www.rescoopvpp.eu/
• Twitter account: https://twitter.com/REScoopVPP