After two interesting webinars, REScoop.eu joined forces with the start-up Grid Singularity on the 30th of April for the third edition of the community-based flexibility webinar. Our webinar series shares insights and stories from energy communities that are trying to capture the benefits of a citizen-centred approach to manage decentralised energy resources. This third edition was focused on tools to enable the participation of citizens in a locally managed and interactive renewable energy grid.
Energy communities are usually presented as synonyms of innovative digital services that involve demand-side flexibility such as optimised self-consumption or aggregation. In a broader perspective, energy communities play a key role in a decentralized energy system based on continuous exchanges among all system actors.
This webinar moderated by Sara Tachelet (REScoop.eu), illustrated the emerging opportunities for innovative energy service providers. The event presented an overview of digital tools that service providers can use to support new community-based flexibility services. It also hightlighted the role of the local energy market that can serve as a hub for all local actors to best valorise their services and balance the system.
Roland Tual (REScoop.eu) introduced the session by giving a brief overview of the energy system landscape and presented the role of new actors like Energy Services Companies or Aggregators. He also highlighted the important role of supporting services like those developed by REScoopVPP and GridSingularity.
Vincent Dierickx (EnergieID) and Malte Zieher (Bündnis Bürgerenergie) introduced the REScoopVPP project, an ongoing Horizon 2020 project led by cooperatives that is using open source software in order to set up digital flexibility tools for cooperatives. These tools aim at enabling energy cooperatives to provide flexibility services such as self-consumption, dynamic pricing or aggregation.
Ed Hesse (Grid Singularity) introduced the Grid Singularity platform enabling individuals to set up their own digital energy community, which could be implemented in partnership with local aggregators / energy service providers to enable them with more choices, such as selecting source of energy or choosing their energy trading partners.
Fatuma Ali (Grid Singularity) conducted a live demo of the platform’s new interface, setting-up a new energy community in a few clicks and presenting the platform’s different features.
Please find below the recording of the webinar and the presentations of our speakers.