Sensa

The Vision | Sustainable and affordable!

Society has set big goals to limit the increase of global temperature to maximum 1.5 degrees by horizon 2050. As citizens, we are all responsible for a better future. At the same time, most of us care about our energy bills. We don’t want to pay double for going green and after a hard day at work, we like to relax and enjoy a certain comfort level.

The current electrical system has been designed to produce electricity centrally and transport / distribute it toward the consumption points. Our system needs to evolve if we want to help Society reach its goal and make the energy transition a success; enabling renewable penetration, decentralization and electrification.

The idea of Sensa project is to develop a version 2.0 of the day/night pricing model, a real-time dynamic pricing model, incentivizing the consumers to support the system needs (balancing of the grid, congestion management, auto-consumption, etc). Prices are designed to target the desired reaction level (depends on the needs), using AI / machine learning algorithms.

The Product | The big idea

The smart node will then automatically react to this price signal and control the electrical appliances, while complying with the comfort requirements of the user.

As an incentive to participate in the electrical system, the user will be rewarded since the smart box will typically shift the consumption pattern in a way as to decrease the bill. This mechanism will take place every 5 minutes.

The scope of the sandboxing phase

During this project, the consortium wants to validate several hypotheses:

The user engagement and available flexibility:

• Via the website https://sensa.energy/, an assessment of the installed flexibility will be made. The tradeoff to define the right level of information versus the accuracy of the assessed flexibility will be investigated

• We also want to understand if/how the users are ready for this new approach of the energy and how we could best engage with them with a smart pricing concept

We want to test the technical feasibility of the solution:

• Ensure that we have the right price for the right flexibility (validate the artificial intelligence algorithms transforming the desired reactions into a price signal).

• Ensure that a smart node device can adequately use a price signal and transform it into a control signal to the appliances, also considering the local constraints and user comfort settings.

The sandbox results

• Hypothesis 1: The residential market is ready to participate in implicit flexibility programs. It has been validated through an extensive market survey collecting the point of view of Belgian residential people about the evolution of the energy sector and their active participation to the fight against climate change.

• Hypothesis 2: For the following use – steering an Electric boiler based on a DA price signal – here are the results:
  • we can provide a complete end-to-end solution built around the IO.Energy communication platform while integrating different market parties.
  • Energy and costs savings on the electrical consumption of a boiler are possible with a basic optimization algorithm and a variable price signal (The technical solution was implemented in the lab and some tests were performed on an electric boiler in this lab)
  • The technical solution was implemented in 2 homes but results were not yet analyzedà this part of the project allowed us to see what it was to implement a solution from A to Z at a client’s home: legal aspects to prepare (GDPR, …) and technical installation taking into account the constraints of the clients

• Importance of having complementary partners (companies with different capabilities) around the table
• Importance of having senior management buy-in & expectations alignment. Some partners might see the use-case as a R&D project while others want to have ROI on the short term.
• Importance of developing a common vision clearly understood and shared by all the partners.
• Importance of a good leader who can pull the project with a clear vision who knows where the group is going.
• Importance of a framework (support, training, communication) that prevents the project group to lose the momentum of the project.
• Importance of having deadlines to keep momentum (avoid to extend the sandbox which was extended due to the pandemic).
• Managing the action plan: focus on what really matters and dare to fix smaller objectives with a real commitment instead of large and unclear objectives that are never reached -> “Done is better than perfect” & commitment of every partner is key.
• Being sufficiently lean but not too much. With such a project “on the top” of plenty of other operational work for a great proportion of the partners, it was complicated to apply and respect strictly the agile principle and the scrum rules
• Expect ups and downs: some periods were more productive than others.

For the Ecosystem:

It is a real added value to keep a coach till the end of the sandbox as a guardian of the momentum, to help the group take a step back once in a while and foster the adoption of lean and agile best practices.

The idea is interesting, and the encouraging results showed its potential.  The Sensa team wants to continue to explore the use-cases with a focus on the following technical development:

• Assess the impact of dynamic pricing on the whole electrical equipment of a house and not only on the boiler
• Further develop the generation of the price signal. Explore the possibility of creating a new price signal taking into account the energy component (which is the case for the Day ahead price signal) but also congestion, balancing and auto-consumption aspects to implicitly solve related issues before they happen
• Further develop the optimization algorithm with AI to learn from user’s habits and better stick with user comfort constraints

Want to join the Sensa team? They are looking for one or more flexibility providers!