Executive Summary
Would you like to use your consumer power to accelerate the energy transition by consuming green energy as often as you can? Like a weather #forecast, Community Forecaster indicates the greenest time to consume energy.
While green energy might be produced within your community, it is not available at all times. It is therefore helpful to have a user-friendly tool that indicates when local energy is available.
To provide you with such a tool, Finesco, Memoco and Fluvius have joint forces within the IO.Energy Ecosystem to create Community Forecaster.
During the ideation phase, Community Forecaster has tested communities’ desire to be informed of the best moment to consumer energy in order to consume green energy locally so that it does not go back in the grid where it is mixed with non-green energy
During the sandboxing phase, Community Forecaster has developed a first version of the webpage that presents to the community members the forecast up to 2 days ahead:
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- How much #greenenergy is produced by the assets in the community
- How much electricity is consumed in the community
- How much additional consumption can be covered
Moving forward, Community Forecaster will continue to develop the tool which has the potential to become a key part of a community management suite.
Challenge & Opportunity
The number of energy communities is likely to strongly grow following the EU’s decision to promote them. This allows communities to produce and consume their own local energy. However, community members currently do not know when local renewable energy is available from within the community.
That’s where the Community Forecaster comes in.
Together Finesco, Memoco and Fluvius are about to solve a crucial challenge to accelerate the energy transition by focusing on one question:
How might we enable consumers within an energy community to identify moments where local energy is available to maximize the local use of green energy?
The Vision
The main goal of renewable energy communities is to produce renewable energy and consume it together. To achieve this goal, they invest together in production installations like PV and storage capabilities within the community. The success of the community’s project will depend on the amount of energy they can keep in the community: their collective self-consumption.
As the production and collective consumption fluctuate in time and are hence not simultaneous, not all energy produced will be consumed within the community at all times.
The community forecaster tool can help them in achieving this. It is like a weather forecast but for energy consumption and production. It indicates when is the best time to consume energy.
The Product & Data Approach
Community Forecaster is a digital tool which indicates up to two days ahead when is the greenest time to consume energy.
Traffic lights will indicate when is the best time to use electrical appliances or charge an Electric Vehicle. It will allow the community to increase its self-sustainability.
The tool will collect digital meter data of producers and consumers in the community through the IO.E platform. It will also collect renewable energy production forecasts from third parties. On this basis, it will forecast electricity production and consumption up to 2 days ahead.
This forecast will be made available to the community members through a smartphone app. On a regular basis, individual and community reports will also be made available.
The scope of the sandboxing phase
During the sanboxing phase, Community Forecaster will focus on 4 main objectives:
1 | Digital meter data
Data from the digital meter are transmitted via the DSO or a Memoco gateway to the back-end data storage via the IO.E platform.
2 | Forecast algorithm
Using renewable energy production forecasts and the historical meter data of the community members, a forecast will be made of production and consumption.
3 | App
A visual representation will be provided of the 48 hour forecast as well as indications when is the greenest time to consume energy.
4 | Reports
Reports will be available through the app and online at the individual and community level.
The sandbox results
1 | Where the hypotheses validated?
The team developed the necessary infrastructure to collect digital meter data from individual community members, transfer these data with a dongle to the Internet of Energy platform and store them in our back-office servers.
They furthermore developed a first version of the webpage that presents to the community members the forecast up to 2 days ahead:
- How much green energy is produced by the assets in the community
- How much electricity is consumed in the community
- How much additional consumption can be covered
Next to that they also drafted the necessary legal documentation to be able to offer the service to energy communities in terms of data protection and GPDR before recruiting their first test group for the tool in the community of Flobecq in Wallonia.
2 | What are the lessons learned?
Signing up test communities was more difficult than expected. The regulatory framework is still in development. As a consequence, the cost savings of sharing energy between citizens is yet unknown. Having to deal with this uncertainty, it has been difficult to convince people to participate in the test.
The other objective of the sandboxing, to monitor usage and response of the community members will therefore be tested in the next phase.
3 | What are the next steps?
We believe the Community Forecaster will become an interesting tool for renewable energy communities once the regulatory framework is clear and hence we will continue to develop and test it.
In the long term, it will probably be part of the tools to manage and optimise renewable energy communities.
Shall we add a node about putting the project on hold till the regulations clarifies the gain for community consumers?
Members
Sam Debaveye Fluvius
Jérôme Kervyn de Meerendré Memoco
Kirsten Loncke Fluvius
Julien Pelletier Memoco
Peter Vandendriessche Finesco
Partners
Finesco is a Belgian developer of energy projects, focused on energy efficiency, local renewable energy production and flexibility. We are experts in energy markets, business development and project management.
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Finesco will be responsible for the project management and take care of the relationship management with the renewable energy communities.
Fluvius is the Distribution System Operator for Flanders, with the mission to sustainably connect society through multi-utility solutions.
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Fluvius is the independent data operator and its cooperation and contribution can be found in its role as data provider, facilitator, advisor and expert.
Memoco develops technologies that allow the management of data flows in real time. Whether that’s collating, transmitting or using them to inform decisions. We use these systems primarily for managing and monitoring connected devices, such as solar power installations, home automations and smart grids, in a reliable and secure way.
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Memoco will develop the hardware and software solutions for the project.
