May June 2020 Electric.ie Magazine

ELECTRIC.IE • The Magazine & Website for the Irish Electrical Industry • 61 European Research Introduces New Demand Response Services DELTA, an EU funded research and innovation project, focuses specifically on technologies that make it easier for households and other small and medium sized customers (consumers or prosumers) to participate in demand response service provision. Highlighting the nature of the project, Project Manager Dimos Ioannidis, of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Information Technologies Institute, in Thessaloniki, Greece said: “DELTA has built a framework for the secure and reliable integration of small to medium prosumers in the electricity network to facilitate their participation in demand response service provision.” Demand response is a strategy used to involve customers in balancing supply and demand on the electric grid. By reducing or shifting their electricity usage during peak periods in exchange for better tariffs or other incentives, electricity customers can help strengthen grid reliability and ensure stability. With renewable energy technology becoming cheaper and more readily available, the number of small and medium scale consumers and prosumers – who both consume and produce energy – is on the rise. Thanks to the DELTA project, they can play an active role in the energy transition. The DELTA technology gives consumers more control over their energy usage and allows aggregators to manage their small and medium sized consumer portfolios more efficiently. The key technologies developed by ‒ Demand response schemes are typically aimed at large electricity users, but a new European initiative has developed smart technologies to allow smaller consumers to become active players in the energy market. A set of innovative tools are introduced to ensure optimal energy balance coordination by harnessing the flexibility of small and medium sized consumers. DELTA include the DELTA Virtual Node (DVN) the Fog-enabled Intelligent Device (FEID), and the DELTA Smart Contracts. The DVN, built upon the principles of the virtual power plants, provides aggregators with the technology they need to efficiently manage their portfolios of small and medium sized customers. The DVN platform, a software suite powered by a secure, permissioned blockchain, has the ability to unobtrusively and automatically group consumers and prosumers together based on their energy consumption characteristics. This involves both real-time and historical data, allowing aggregators to accurately forecast the energy flexibility they can offer to the grid when demand is high. The DVN platform is equipped with state-of- the-art software components that ensure a reliable outcome on every DR request either from the aggregator’s or the end-users’ perspective. The FEID is the hardware placed in homes and businesses that gathers energy data and transmits it to the DVN. This piece of equipment is safe and secure, and thanks to edge computing technologies being employed, it automatically processes information, forecasts consumption and generation, estimates flexibility, and optimally handles received explicit or implicit DR signals. The DELTA Smart Contracts bring forth a new era of contractual agreements between small/ medium customers and their energy retailers and aggregators. In the DELTA ecosystem, the contractual agreements between these actors take the form of computer programmes running on top of DELTA’s permissioned blockchain network. This creates a secure, fully automated and trustworthy framework that empowers customers by allowing them to have a concrete and cryptographically verifiable overview of all the transactions with their retailer/aggregator. Moreover, smart contracts allow the development next generation solutions for demand response in which the customer plays a focal role. In this new paradigm, customers can benefit by, e.g., receiving discounts in energy prices or even monetary compensation for participating in the maintenance of a balanced energy grid. The DELTA solutions have already been lab tested in Thessaloniki, Greece. Later this year, they will be piloted in a commercial building and residential housing estates in London, UK, and at the University of Cyprus campus in Nicosia, Cyprus. For more information, you can visit the DELTA website at: https://www.delta-h2020.eu/ The DELTA Fog-Enabled Intelligent Device (FEID) Industry News