ExpectedOutcome:
Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
- Major contribution to the implementation of the Digitalisation of Energy Action plan.
- Innovation in data-driven energy services by 3rd parties through fast spreading, market uptake and validation under critical operating conditions in a real environment of transparent, accessible and reliable highly distributed open platforms, frameworks and mechanisms for data exchange and storage to support innovative services (for flexibility, RES integration, etc.) across the EU, based on Open Source developed solutions.
- Validation in a large-scale environment of the application of cutting-edge digital technology (Cloud-Edge continuum, edge intelligence, AI/ML (federated learning), IoT) in a more decentralised environment in the energy sector.
- Full set of relevant commonly agreed digital standards applicable to the energy sector through extension and update of existing standards and new standards filling standardisation gaps.
Scope:
- The action should develop solutions that aim at increasing the integration of renewable energy sources, as well as the local generation and consumption of energy and processing of data by developing and piloting at scale open source, environmentally friendly, easily upgradeable and energy-efficient cloud-edge solutions. The application space should include but is not limited to bi-directional EV charging, smart buildings and homes. Solutions are expected to be based on commonly agreed open standards. To the greatest extent possible, they should be building on the common European cloud-edge infrastructure as well as making use of and contributing to the emerging common European data spaces in the fields of energy and mobility. Further, they should support a more decentralised environment for grid flexibility and energy services, based on digital enablers such as artificial intelligence, swarm computing and IoT.
- Validation should be done at least three pilot sites in at least three Member States/Associated Countries and could include under “financial support to third parties” an open call for additional services using up to 10% of the total budget to attract further users and suppliers, in particular SMEs. The modalities of the open call will be defined by the consortium, based on the concrete needs of the project. The appropriate level of data localisation and processing (cloud, edge, far edge, etc.) should be defined on-the-fly by AI algorithms to optimise latency, energy consumption, security, and other important parameters. The solutions must demonstrate critical operation capability such as low-battery, fault tolerance, and harsh weather conditions to ensure the resilient operation.
- To ensure the interoperability among the solutions and with other European IoT research and innovation efforts in the energy and other sectors and the integration into the grid, the project will make use of operational end-to-end architectures, digital platforms and other data exchange infrastructure for the energy system being developed under ongoing EU programmes and other relevant initiatives[1]. Preferably semantically interoperable interactions, as enabled by the ETSI SAREF ontologies, should be used. The projects will be expected to contribute to the piloting, uptake and further development of relevant standards.
- Solutions should include a credible market uptake plan of developed solutions across the EU, in as diverse types of regions and electricity grids (in terms of climate, size, economic activities), and enable 3rd parties, in particular SMEs, to use the developed solutions as a basis to build their innovative data-driven energy services innovations for energy consumers on top of the developed solution. These solutions should collaborate where relevant with the Testing and Experimentation Facility (TEF) for the energy sector.
- The selected projects are expected to contribute to the BRIDGE initiative[2], actively participate to its activities and allocate up to 2% of their budgets to that end. Additional contributions to the ‘Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation’ (AIOTI) and other relevant activities (e.g. clusters of digital projects and coordinating actions) might be considered, when relevant.
Specific Topic Conditions:
Activities are expected to achieve TRL 7-8 for digital energy solutions by the end of the project starting from general purpose digital solutions of at least TRL 5-6 – see General Annex B.
[1]For example, Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe, Digital Europe Program and Connecting Europe Facility, the Data Space design principles of Open DEI, the project supported under the Interoperability Community CSA and aligned with the Digital Europe Data Centre Support Centre, etc.
[2]https://www.h2020-bridge.eu/
