The energy production landscape is being reshaped by distributed energy resources (DER), such as solar PV panels, electric vehicles, battery energy storage and charging stations. The rapid deployment of these DER calls for novel management schemes that can exploit the maximum economic and environmental potential of these resources, empower their end-users in a collaborative manner and at the same time guarantee grid reliability.

The B-DER project will develop a platform to enable peer-to-peer energy transactions between DER, allowing households, with energy generation capabilities, to trade energy in a distributed, optimal, verifiable and transparent fashion. To achieve this mission, the project partners will develop a novel optimization algorithm that allows households to minimize their electricity cost and maximize the use of locally generated PV energy while at the same time respecting the LV-grid constraints.

To enable secure and verifiable decentralized energy transactions between the involved agents, the project will implement the optimization algorithm on a blockchain-smart contract architecture. The project assesses the technical and economic potential of the developed platform using actual data of households’ demand and PV generation profiles, as well as EV charging stations demand in a residential neighborhood in Amsterdam. The socio-economic and regulatory issues of peer to peer and community based markets will also be studied in this project.

• Resourcefully (Amsterdam)
• EnergyCoin Foundation (Arnhem)

We have access to a data platform of prosumers (farmers and industries) with significant energy production, consumption and storage. The goal is to investigate to what extent recent technological and scientific advances (such as data analytics, machine learning and hyperlocal weather forecasts) can be harnessed to accurately match demand and supply in real time, and optimise storage and flexibility. This will allow the participants to benefit financially while at the same time contribute to the stability and flexibility of the grid. Results are expected to guide further research in the organisation of, and interaction among, virtual power plants and microgrids.

• dr. Lennard Visser

• CWI
• Sympower
• TU Delft
• UvA

Urban environments are accelerating their transformation towards cleaner, friendlier places able to respect and use resources more efficiently. Across Europe, cities are blending social innovation, engineering and ICT excellence and smart technologies to help reach these goals. IRIS is at the forefront of this change and announce itself as the newest addition to the European Commission Smart Cities and Communities (SCC) lighthouse projects. The project has been developed around three lighthouse cities - Utrecht (The Netherlands, coordinator), Nice (France), and Gothenburg (Sweden) - who will work as collaborators and test-beds for follower cities Vaasa (Finland), Alexandroupolis (Greece), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Spain) and Focsani (Romania). Each city will draw upon a mix of universities and research organisations, local authorities, innovation agencies and private expertise to accelerate entire communities to adopt ambitious energy, mobility and ICT initiatives.

• Chris Eveleens MSc
• dr. ir. Ioannis Lampropoulos
• dr. Joost Vervoort
• dr. Friedemann Polzin
• dr. Jip Leendertse

A sustainable energy system at district level. Locally produced solar energy is stored in (pool) Electric Vehicles (EV). This energy can be released to the district at a later time, via a smart charging station. The experiences in the Lombok neighborhood in Utrecht, the Netherlands, will be further developed over five years in five linked pilot areas in the Utrecht region. This will result in marketable product-service combinations for various types of areas. All areas combine the production of renewable energy with Vehicle 2 Grid (V2G) charging points and car sharing systems. Each pilot area has its own user profile, type of customer and specific market.

Official website: http://smartsolarcharging.eu/en/

• Nico Brinkel

• Utrecht Sustainability Institute / UU (secretary)
• Parkhuis Lombok (LomboXnet)
• Stedin Netbeheer BV
• Last Mile Solutions
• Vidyn
• Newsolar BV
• Jedlix BV
• Hogeschool Utrecht
• We Drive Solar BV.

Het project gaat bouwen aan een succesvol ecosysteem voor de volledige BIPV(Building Integrated Photo Voltaics)-waardeketen, inclusief de zonne-energie- en bouwsector. Hierbij staan onderlinge en cross-sectorale samenwerking en verrijking van de markt centraal staan en wordt gefocust op de ontwikkeling van technologie, materialen en producten. Het hogere doel is om de slag te maken van technologie push, uit de zonne-energiesector, naar markt pull, uit de bouwsector. Hierin wordt de gehele supply chain te betrokken. Het project moet helpen om de transitie naar een duurzaam energiesysteem te versnellen en de betrokken sectoren economisch te versterken en te laten groeien door (inter)nationaal te vermarkten van het BIPV.

The PARENT project (JPI Urban Europe) aims to increase engagement of individuals in the responsible management of their own electricity usage. It develops an innovative technical platform for participatory energy management, fuelled by novel analytics, visualisation and gamification techniques. Using energy monitors, electricity consumption and solar Photovoltaics energy production data in households is collected and analyzed, and information, tips and feedback are provided to each individual household using mobile and web applications. The PARENT project operates across three European cities: Amsterdam (Netherlands), Bergen (Norway) and Brussels (Belgium). 

In Amsterdam, the "East Harbour Prosumers Community" pilot aims to allow prosumers to have better insight of their electricity consumption and solar energy production, get personalized tips, engage with neighbors to reduce interaction with the electricity grid, and build an energy independent community. The pilot was launched in March 2017 targeting 30 households in the East Harbour area of Amsterdam. The pilot is lead and executed by Utrecht University and Resourcefully.

For more information about the project and pilot, please visit: https://goo.gl/gUkjQq , or check out this video interview: https://youtu.be/-KzjCnrfk5s

• Resourcefully
• Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• University of Bergen
• Blue Planet Academy & Consulting;

The increasing penetration of solar electricity gives rise to a number of simultaneous challenges: The need for balanced supply demand mapping, estimation of solar energy potential along with monitoring and forecasting of solar energy. The objective of this project is to address the above challenges with use large connected datasets "Big Data".

• Panos Moraitis
• Bouke Siebenga
• Wiep Folkerts
• Paul Hermans