InEExS

Project Summary

The core concept of InEExS is the deployment of integrated energy services across sectors and carriers, and the tokenization of energy saving data in a public blockchain to facilitate cooperation among market segments and actors. InEExS improves the implementation of EED Art7 and supports Obligated Parties (EED, Art7) to provide integrated service offers that enable energy savings, system efficiency and include non-energy benefits. Particular attention is placed on the development of business models and contractual schemes that facilitate the implementation of sector integrating smart energy services and the deployment of a wide range of sustainable technologies (RES and DER, EVs, heat pumps, IoT controls, EE measures). The InEExS consortium brings together diverse market actors (utilities, energy communities, energy agencies, technology providers) who engage in trust creation methods to connect their activities through distributed ledger technology and smart contracts. InEExS will develop improved business models and deploy innovative energy (efficiency) services to the market. The project aims to:

1. Facilitate the roll out of new energy service business models to a wide array of customers (B2B and B2C). The goal is to create self-reinforcing business models that create revenue streams for utilities and Obligated Parties (EED Art7) as well as ESCOs and energy communities.
2. Connect smart energy services across sectors based on energy efficiency, distributed energy resources (DERs), demand response/flexibility, electric mobility while including non-energy benefits such as comfort, health and safety.
3. Offer capacity building activities to support market actors to replicate new business models and adopt contractual schemes that overcome market barriers towards increased adoption of sustainable technologies and sector integration.

InEExS Business Cases

InEExS considers a carefully selected set of four (plus one) heterogeneous and promising business scenarios, as the basis for identifying the fundamental requirements and analyzing the complexities of offering integrated energy services across domains. The considered business concepts span a wide range of energy services (space heating/cooling, hot water preparation, e-mobility, building renovation), sectors (buildings, transport, tech, energy, and industry - through replication-), carriers (electricity, natural gas), building infrastructure (smart meters, PV, legacy boilers, heat pumps, EV chargers, new built, historical buildings).

The core technologies of InEExS will be deployed as implementation enablers, to support the different BCs and their corresponding services, as detailed below:

BC1: Energy Performance Contracting with Pay4Performance guarantees: EPCs with metered energy savings and Pay4Performance guarantees through public tenders with berlinovo targeting ESCOs for the renovation of publicly owned buildings. Contracts are governed using Pay-for-Performance, enabled by smart meters and advanced MRV, towards incentivising engaged stakeholders to increase the quality of employed measures, increase the attained savings and reduce the initial investment payback duration.

BC2: Improved self-consumption of DER in Energy Cooperatives: Energy Community members are provided with behaviour impact prompts (nudges) to enable load shifting, by delivering integrated information about distributed RES generation, self-production ratio, aggregate energy demand, grid price levels and others. Real-time smart meter data are collected from all end consumers, while means of user engagement include a smartphone application and public information panels. The end users receive targeted advice for modifying the time of use of a range of residential appliances (white goods, HVAC equipment, EV chargers, etc.).

BC3: Energy efficiency and flexibility services for legacy natural gas boilers: Optimal tuning of legacy natural gas boilers for space and water heating will be enabled based on smart heating controllers, towards (a) improving energy efficiency (up to 35%), (b) providing real-time flexibility services to the natural gas supplier, (c) delivering remote maintenance support. The achieved benefits in terms of energy savings-cost, climate comfort and user satisfaction will be constantly monitored to provide aggregate demand monitoring and management services to the supplier.

BC4: Smart energy management for EV chargers and electricity-based HVAC appliances: B2B2C energy management solution offered to energy retailers, allowing them to digitize their offering to customers, by employing smart charging of EVs and smart control of heat-pumps for residential space heating over vendor exposed cloud APIs and automated energy management algorithms. Considered energy services include: (a) demand response for grid balancing, (b) demand shaping, based on CO2, tariff, self-production ratio signals and others.

BC5: Decentralized Energy Efficiency Power Plant (DEEPP): In addition to the four BCs that will be validated in real world settings, this BC will be examined that is not already on the market. BC5 develops a potentially highly disruptive business model that aims to allow energy efficiency to compete in energy markets as baseload energy. It is building on the concepts of energy efficiency as an energy resource, as infrastructure, -as-a-Service, and the business model of the EE Aggregator developed in the SENSEI project and is using the enabling technology of smart contracts and distributed ledgers.

The Business Cases (BCs) are improving on existing, viable business models by enhancing their integration with other services and sectors and build on pre-existing communities of participants, while aiming at extending these services to a large share of their market segment. 

NTUA Role

NTUA is leading the following task and activities:

• Sustainability, replication, and exploitation of project results
• Stakeholder engagement for smart service adaptation
• Networking and synergies with other LIFE and EU projects

Partners

Visit our main webpage: https://ieecp.org/projects/ineexs/ 
Use and follow #INEEXS on social media:  LinkedIn, Twitter
 

Disclaimer

Co-funded by the European Union under project ID101077033. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.