Technical Workshops

Creating so-called “urban energy islands” is based on the rationale that if every community generates the energy it needs, locally and sustainably, the global issue of climate change can partially be solved locally. Consequently, an urban energy island is a geographically delineated district that aims at achieving a high level of energy self-sufficiency while offering energy services to external grids when needed.

In a trans-disciplinary approach, the EU Horizon 2020 research project RENergetic tackles this task by optimizing the generation and composition of energy supply across the energy sectors electricity, mobility, and heat, and distributing it efficiently.

With the project being in its last term, we want to share and discuss the main outcomes to a wider public.

The Clean Energy Transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources requires a paradigm shift in energy generation, distribution and consumption. A key driver of this transition is the digitalization of the energy sector. Increasing interconnectivity and the advancement of Industry 4.0 is increasing the amount of data generated about energy systems and their performance. However, semantic interoperability between datasets still needs to be improved. A lack of interoperability restricts the development of scalable energy-oriented applications. Cloud-based data platforms can provide a standardized and systematic framework to integrate and process data but can also facilitate exchange between data producers and data need-owners. In this workshop, we will showcase the development of the Digicities platform, a modular, cloud-based platform that uses semantic data layers to support the development of energy applications and assist data exchange. Interested parties can register for the demonstration phase, which will run four months following the workshop (expected January-April 2025).

Integrating information and communication technologies (ICT) in traditional power systems has led to smart grids. Interoperability and standardization challenges persist in smart grids due to increased interactions between energy actors. The Smart Grid Architecture Model (SGAM) emerged as a simple representation model for smart grids to help develop innovative solutions considering these challenges. However, it struggles to represent the complexity of new market-based solutions that current trends demand. The proposed workshop aims to promote discussions concerning the potential revising and adjustment of the SGAM to accommodate better social and technical aspects demanded by new smart grid solutions at the market zone and business interoperability layer. This discussion is motivated by the observation that modern market-based flexibility activation schemes are found to be a white space in SGAM modeling in multiple recent research works.

The transformation of electricity markets associated with the transition towards high shares of renewable power generation results in the constant development of market mechanisms. However, changing the current market design does affect all other markets and their participants in not necessarily foreseeable ways, as the last changes in the German reserve markets demonstrated. This raises the need for tools and simulation models to investigate and understand such complex market interplay and predict possible adverse effects and misuse of market power. The ASSUME project aims to develop an open-source, agent-based simulation toolbox for electricity markets using deep reinforcement learning algorithms.