SP4 - Consumer and Prosumer activation and Engagement through digitalization and ICT

For the energy transition to be successful, an active participation of consumers and prosumers is essential. Next to subscribing to Energy Efficiency initiatives, the costumers can support this transition by investing in local distributed RES (e.g. rooftop PV) and participating in electrification of heating and transport schemes. Through the active control of building level flexible loads and storage, enabled by digitalization and ICT, they can minimize their energy costs and emissions, and offer valuable services to local grid operators, system operators and market stakeholders. In this way, they not only remove barriers to increase the share RES in the energy mix, but also support new ‘demand follows generation’ and ‘use locally produced energy locally’ paradigms through novel resilient distributed control paradigms as the Web-of-Cells that was developed in the ELECTRA IRP. In SP4, the focus is on specific (instead of statistical) prosumer/building level forecasting, modelling and optimal control, considering buildings as active connection points to the grid, including peer-to-peer energy trading and the bottom-up aggregation of active buildings to form Local Energy Communities that interact with grid and (local) market stakeholders.