The SYNERGY project is celebrating its first year – with aspiring insights, new ways of working and important milestones achieved

By Tasos Tsitsanis [Suite5], Ioana-Emilia Badea [GECO Global], Luis Viguer Torres [ETRA I+D]

It has indeed been a year of new learnings and new opportunities. The COVID crisis has brought about new ways of working and at the same time proving the case for the opportunities that lie within digitalization.

In this light, the SYNERGY project seeks to take advantage of the increasing digitalization of also the electricity sector. Digitalization has brought opportunities to optimize operations and explore new business areas. In the energy industry, the amount of data is vast, and digitalization is thus linked closely to big data collection and analysis within advanced algorithms and AI technology.

Within the SYNERGY project it is fully recognized that industry stakeholders are already collecting – and to a certain extent already analysing their own data. However, the real value of big data produced across the electricity data value chain is hidden in the sharing of such information between the different stakeholders under the prism of an emerging economy around electricity data. Thus, lies the opportunities both in developing new ways of working and linking the existing technologies and data repositories – and amidst all this to understand what drives stakeholders to work together.

‘’The first year of the SYNERGY project has brought about the basic understanding of what brings the stakeholders of the energy industry to work together in relation to sharing data. This work is a prerequisite to building the right solutions – since participation from the whole energy value chain is a prerequisite for success when developing data solutions” says Thomas Mikkelsen, CEO & Founder at GECO Global.

Given the continuously growing role of distributed assets in the totality of business functions in the electricity sector (from Network Management to Energy Trading and from Control of Individual DERs to Flexibility Sharing), it becomes apparent that non-discriminatory, transparent and secure data exchanges between the electricity sector stakeholders are key to advancing knowledge generated at different network end-points; while enabling the revelation of valuable operational insights considering, otherwise, non-accessible (or non-utilized) critical information generated beyond the edge of traditional power networks.

‘’Looking ahead, our main goal and focus for this second year is the first release of the SYNERGY Big Data Platform and AI Analytics Marketplace. The integrated SYNERGY platform will be available by mid-2021 and the whole team is highly committed to effectively and timely achieving this key milestone of the project.” says Tasos Tsitsanis, Business Development Director at Suite5.

In this context, SYNERGY aims to unleash the data-driven innovation and collaboration potential across currently diversified and fragmented electricity actors, acting as a multiplier of the “combined” data value that can be accrued, shared, and traded. SYNERGY re-conceives real-time data sharing against traditionally bilateral contracting applied in the electricity sector, to enable holistic optimization of the operation of electricity networks and the energy performance of their constituent components (RES plants, buildings, districts) within a data (intelligence) sharing ecosystem. An ecosystem that is fueled by attractive business opportunities for the involved stakeholders, under the principles of a data economy creation around electricity data.

Digital solutions in times of Covid-19/Learnings from a Covid-19-year perspective

The pandemic crisis has clearly demonstrated the need for the transition to more sophisticated (data and intelligence-driven) solutions that can effectively adjust electricity stakeholders’ business routines to the new status quo and ensure an increased adaptability and business sustainability under highly uncertain and extraordinary circumstances.

The alteration of load profiles (shift from tertiary to residential consumption), the increase of RES in the energy mix and the significant reduction in energy demand, have brought forward the necessity for advanced analytics solutions that can deal with a small portion of historical data and a high degree of uncertainty to address the need of Network Operators for accurate forecasts for the short- and mid-term. Lower sales on the side of electricity retailers point out to the need for transforming their business model towards (digital) energy service provider. Consumers spending more time at homes are progressively realizing the value of non-energy services for convenience, well-being, and comfort, complementarily to traditional services provided by utilities and ESCOs.

These are just a few examples of the impact that COVID-19 has brought over the electricity data value chain and highlight the relevance and value that SYNERGY can offer to the electricity data value chain stakeholders. In this context and under a continuously evolving business environment, SYNERGY effectively addresses the most prominent and fundamental business challenges for the electricity sector value chain for adaptability through digitalization and for effectiveness & sustainability through the introduction of advanced collective intelligence concepts and new (data-driven) business opportunities.

Successful first year with ambitious second-year predictions

The key highlight of the project for 2020, is the release of the reference architecture for the SYNERGY Big data platform and AI analytics marketplace, aiming at enhancing the electricity data value chain stakeholders’ data reach, improving their internal intelligence on electricity-related optimization functions, while facilitating their involvement in novel sharing/trading models of data and intelligence, in order to shift individual decision-making at a collective intelligence level.

‘’The SYNERGY consortium has been performing with high-quality standards for the first year of the project, which makes us confident to overcome all the challenges ahead during 2021. To mention the most relevant from a managerial perspective, it has to be considered the deployment efforts that the end-users will face in the five different pilot sites, considering the COVID-19 restrictions that we are still facing in most cases.’’ says Luis Viguer Torres, the Project Coordinator at ETRA I+D.

Within the 1st year of implementation, SYNERGY has been successful in the identification of end-users’ requirements and the definition of the associated use cases; the foundations upon which the development of the technological innovations will step on during 2021. Business-wise, SYNERGY elaborated on a bundle of business model innovations, thus paving way for the smooth business integration and successful market uptake across the electricity data value chain.

Suite5 is the Technical Coordinator of the project. Read more about them HERE.

ETRA I+D is the Project Coordinator in SYNERGY. Read more about ETRA I+D HERE.

GECO Global is the Communication and Dissemination leader in WP9. Read more about GECO Global HERE.

Presenting the SYNERGY demo sites

The SYNERGY project has just completed its first year with great success and solid goals for 2021 (read more here). In short, the project is trying to introduce solutions to help the electricity value chain stakeholder. The aim of the project is the novel framework and reference architecture for a Big Energy Data Platform and AI Analytics Marketplace, together with big data-enabled domain-specific applications.

Twenty-four partners in nine EU countries make up the project’s consortium. Five of them are large-scale demonstrators of the project situated in Finland, Austria, Croatia, Spain, and Greece. Their main role in the project is to facilitate replicability, scale-up, and eventual market launch. The five demo sites involve a variety of actors and data sources, heterogeneous energy systems and assets spanning heterogeneous climatic, demographic, and cultural characteristics.

SYNERGY results will be extensively validated in the five large-scale demonstrators and the cases have been carefully selected to address the emerging needs of the majority of the electricity value chain stakeholders (spanning TSOs, DSOs, Retailers, Aggregators, ESCOs, RES Operators, Facility Managers, Local Energy Communities, Construction Companies, and Prosumers). The demonstrator cases will deliver significant impact in technical, economic, environmental, and social terms and, ultimately, promote the novel business model and service innovations, based on data (intelligence) sharing/trading (properly simplifying complicated and meshed interactions between value chain actors).

Get to know each of our demo sites below:

The Finnish Demo Site

Forum Virium Helsinki (FVH) pilot sites are located in the city of Helsinki. There are two main pilot buildings, which are both public buildings: Urban Environment House, and a vocational school, Stadia. There are over 16 000 data points in the pilot buildings for the needs of SYNERGY. In addition, data from more than 20 residential buildings in the Kalasatama region are used to set a sound basis for a district/urban level building management framework.Urban planning and policy-making activities to be implemented will be further supported with a wealth of data coming from a 3D City Model based on CityGML and VirtualCitySystems visualisation tool, containing simulated building energy and renovation data on the city level (referring to hundreds of buildings).FVH pilots provide a wealth of data for the use of urban planners to perform more accurate analysis and dynamic simulations related to the Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan of the city of Helsinki.

The pilot sites of Caverion have varying geographical locations in Southern Finland. Multiple pilot sites can be found in the city of Helsinki, including surrounding areas. The city of Helsinki is part of the province of Uusimaa. There are also some pilot locations in varying rural areas of Southern Finland.

The pilot sites include a variety of commercial and public buildings. Most of the buildings function as office buildings for a multitude of sub-letters. The buildings range from small office buildings to large complexes including multiple houses.

The pilot site buildings are owned by several different entities. All buildings are managed or have building technology that has been installed by Caverion, as well as have building owners that are interested in developing facility management techniques related to building technical system energy usage and energy efficiency management in accordance with sustainability goals defined by both the companies as well as by the European Union.

The Spanish Demo Site

The Spanish Pilot from Cuerva is located in the South of Spain, in the province of Granada.

A portion of the distribution network operated by Grupo CUERVA in the region of Granada will be used as the main electricity infrastructure to set the Spanish demo site.

This area for the pilot will be the “La Calahorra” community, a small village located near Granada (Spain) this area counts with 650 supply points and a peak demand of 350 kW.

Also, some other types of services can be tested in the La Calahorra pilot, enabling also grid-scale control through storage technology and massive consumer’s participation or the provision of bottom-up energy services, i.e. from the distribution to the transmission system.

Considering the type of applications to be delivered in the SYNERGY project, the La Calahorra area is ideal for exploring microgrid related use cases or testing different early-stage approaches for distribution grid operation since a significant impact can be achieved only with low-capacity control and storage devices as well as with participant consumers.

The Spanish pilot from COBRA is located within the province of Albacete, in Centre Spain. The PV asset is composed of a set of plants, in one of which the pilot will be carried out. Bonete IV PV plant is already operating and was designed for using monofacial si-based modules resting on single-axis trackers. The number of modules for Bonete IV raises up to 144.900, for a nominal power of 49.9 MW.

The aim of this pilot demo strives in different pillars: real photovoltaic plants with a diversity of locations, size and plant configurations offering wide potential resources of data in order to test the innovative services defined in the project, namely:

Developing machine learning algorithms in the photovoltaic energy sector focused on energy efficiency, enhancing assets reliability and production forecast in real-time to ensure the safe and effective operation of grids and the provision of innovative energy services (predictive maintenance tools).
Reducing LCoE and O&M Costs of PV technology through advanced analytics services.
Provision of enhanced Energy Management System’s Control Software to align the operation of the PV plants to the requirements of Smart Grids

The Spanish pilot from URBENER is comprised of business offices, medical and sports centres that are distributed across the Spanish territory.

The pilot will have a focus on:

Analysis of generation/demand and fine-grained forecasting services.
Personalisation of demand /flexibility profiles to optimize individualized purchase strategies in the energy market along with cost optimization in the retailer side.
Fine-grained flexibility forecasting in order to enable customers participation in explicit and implicit demand response market schemas.

The Greek Demo Site

The Greek Pilot Area is located in the Attica Region.

The Greek Demo Site consists of 2 separate Pilot areas all situated in Attica Region, one in the Mesogeia area (North-eastern Attica) and the other in the Kifissia district in Northern Attica.

The Mesogeia Pilot area focuses on a specific Distribution network line that incorporates; A MV line (1-21), which includes 3 HV/MV Substations, 46 MV/LV Substations, 12 MV consumers and their own Substations, 4 major RES producers (PV stations) connected at LV and about 200 LV customers that have been equipped with smart meters employing PLC communications.

The Kifissia Pilot area focuses on a residential building equipped with its own PV Installation and an average energy self-consumption rate of 45%. Additionally, it is equipped with a 4.5 kWh electricity storage infrastructure, smart meters and smart plugs for the measurement and potentially control of the residence’s critical loads.

All Greek Demo Partners, HEDNO – IPTO – EPA – VERD, will coordinate and provide the necessary data in order to facilitate the successful implementation of the SYNERGY platform and its applications.

Read more about HEDNO HERE.
Read more about IPTO HERE.
Read more about EPA HERE.
Read more about VERD HERE.

The Croatian Demo Site

The Croatian Pilot Area is located in the north-west part of Croatia, in the region of North Kvarner, on the island of Krk.The Croatian pilot sites target self-organized local energy communities, increased self-consumption from RES (RES plants owned by Ponikve eko otok Krk d.o.o. as a data source) by exploiting flexibility from DER’s, challenge of the infrastructure that must support the tourism sector and a large number of visitors in summer and also social benefits shared to alleviate energy poverty (which is also in line with general Krk policy towards local inhabitants).

The Croatian demonstrator represents a challenging use case of the local energy community with the strategic goal of becoming a net-zero island while having to support significantly increased consumption in summer months.

KRK demo partner is acting as the ESCO/ Microgrid operator in order to provide energy services to the island which has already been named as an “eco-island” community and has a strategy of becoming a net-zero energy island in place. The selected pilot consists of Ponikve headquarters and a garbage disposal facility. These buildings are equipped with smart metering and partially equipped with building sensing /control equipment. In addition, a PV rooftop facility and EV charging station will be available at the demo site.

The following pictures show the location of the pilot areas on the island of Krk, Croatia:

Read more about KRK (external link)

The Austrian Demo Site

Location of the two pilot areas in the grid of the DSO Energy Güssing **(Click to enlarge)**

The Austrian Pilot Area is located in the Southeast of Austria, in the south of the province Burgenland, in the district of Güssing. The Austrian Demo Site focuses on two Pilot areas situated in the district of Güssing and connected to the distribution grid of the local DSO Energy Güssing. The Pilot areas are considered grid areas and are located in two different parts of the grid.

One Pilot area is located in the eastern part of the grid in the municipality Strem and the other Pilot area is located in the western part of the grid in the municipality Güssing. The pilot area “Strem” is mainly composed of single-family houses and the pilot area “Güssing” is mainly composed of business customers. A high penetration of RES plants is given in both areas (biogas plants, PV-plants).

SYNERGY to actively participate and contribute in the Business Models Parallel Session of the BRIDGE General Assembly

On March 3, SYNERGY will present the preliminary results of the business modelling activities of the project in the Parallel Session focusing on Business Models, organized in the frame of the BRIDGE General Assembly.

The business models session will offer the opportunity to the new projects joining BRIDGE to learn more about what are the actions that the ongoing projects are taking in these terms. This exchange of best practice will allow the new initiatives to optimise their use of resources and leverage on previous results.

Tasos Tsitsanis from the SYNERGY Technical Coordinator, Suite5, will highlight the importance of the SYNERGY business models and business model innovations towards facilitating the advancement of business operations of the electricity data value chain stakeholders and the transformation of their current business practices within a data-driven, data-intelligence oriented and data (intelligence) sharing-enabled framework, that will ensure increased operational efficiency along with the creation of new economic opportunities for data and intelligence producers.

Moreover, valuable insights will be provided on the methodology followed for defining the preliminary collaborative Business Models of the project, the hybrid approach for analyzing them in detail and the instruments for assessing their viability and attractiveness (in economic terms) for the variety of the electricity data value chain stakeholders.

You can read more about the BRIDGE Initiative at h2020-bridge.eu.

Year: 2021