DE-RISK the adoption of Local Flexibility Markets to unlock the safe and reliable mass deployment of Renewable Energy Systems

Local Flexibility Markets (LFM) provide an opportunity for consumers to play a significant role in the operation of the electric grid by reducing or shifting their electricity usage in response to time-based rates or other forms of financial incentives. Demand Response (DR) programs are currently being used by some electric system planners and operators, using mainly the flexibility provided by large industrial facilities connected to the high-voltage grid, as resource options for balancing supply and demand. The new challenge is to unlock the very high potential of the LFMs in the distribution grid where the main sources of flexibility are residential and tertiary buildings, representing 70% of the total DR potential. DE-RISK overcomes these challenges by de-risking the adoption of LFMs to unlock the full DR potential and therefore supporting the market uptake of renewable energy systems.

DE-RISK aims at: Boosting the end-users active participation in the LFMs by deeply understanding their needs and requirements through an innovative behavioural analysis methodology; Deploying the low cost DE-RISK digital twin automated platform to assess, validate and unlock the flexibility potential in 4 highly replicable case studies from different regions of EU as per geographical, climatic and regulatory conditions; Bridging the regulatory gap and roadmapping the LFMs in different regulatory and policy frameworks and market maturity conditions; and Developing and validating innovative sustainable business models and financing mechanisms (crowdfunding/lending, EPC, P2P) to de-risk the upfront investment to ensure a long-term viability and sustainability of the local flexibility markets.

DE-RISK targets supporting the market uptake of renewable energy systems by fostering the adoption of LFMs and unlocking up to 100GW of flexibility in 2030 which will allow a safe and reliable integration of RES in the grid. DE-RISK will achieve this ambitious objective by minimizing the investments and implementation risk through an innovative customer behaviour change journey that will increase end users' trust and willingness to participate in the flexibility markets. DE-RISK integrates building, citizen and grids digital twins in its flexibility platform capable of reducing the gap between simulation and real implementation thus mitigating potential technical risks during deployment and operational phase.

Specific Objectives of DE-RISK

Objective 1:Engage the end consumers to take an active part under the local flexibility strategy. DE-RISK will motivate and engage customers to influence the energy demand curve, participate in flexibility sharing and become an active part of the underlying local flexibility market.

Objective 2:Increase RES hosting capacity and minimize the risk of implementation and operation of LFMs. DE-RISK will develop parameterizable digital twin models to streamlining the work of system integrators and aggregators to perform high accuracy simulation before physical integration and operation and be confident in 100% error-free commissioning.

Objective 3:Expose local flexibility regulatory challenges and develop a regulatory recommendation package to overcome them. State-of-the-art regulatory analysis of the local flexibility markets and provide open, evidence based, modern and transparent guidelines targeting high impact local, national and EU policy makers.

Objective 4:Leverage the adoption of local flexibility markets and RES investments: By exploring new business opportunities through innovative multi-sided business models to support all actors in the LFMs while analysing and validating new financial schemes to democratize the access to RES investments schemes and boost RES market uptake.

Objective 5:Validate DE-RISK holistic solution to guarantee its scalability and replicability. Demonstrate the DE-RISK multidisciplinary integrated solution at 4 sites operating under different energy market, regulatory and climatic conditions in France, Spain, Ireland and Turkey over a period of at least 12 months.

The activities in the project will be structured in six Work Packages (WP), each of them divided into specific tasks. WP1 corresponds to coordination and management activities. WP2 is entirely dedicated to fully understanding the customer behaviour through specific behaviour analysis followed by the preparation and implementation of the customer behaviour change journey. In the WP3, the legal, regulatory and financial conditions are analysed to determine the boundary conditions in each case study and a detailed road map is prepared for the EU commission and member states. The WP4 objective is to validate the solution through the deployment and assessment of DE-RISK in 4 case studies in ES, TR, IE, FR. WP5 will set the framework to exploit and commercialize the project foregrounds and will develop business models and replicability plans to ensure the market uptake and the long-term viability of the solution. Finally, WP6 will prepare and execute exhaustive communication and dissemination plans, including 4 workshops in the involved countries.