Goals & Objectives

Energy Communities (ECos) represent the future of smart energy grids, efficiently integrating distributed energy resources to promote self-consumption among end-users. ECODREAM is focused on creating sustainable urban environments by harnessing the potential of ECos that offer environmental benefits by reducing carbon footprint, social benefits through increased end-user participation, and economic benefits by lowering distribution and transmission costs and grid losses. To ensure stable operations, ECODREAM will develop a synergic suite of control and optimization algorithms, integrating information and communication technologies (ICT), and in line with regulations, end-user preferences, operational constraints, and interactions with external entities ( neighbouring ECos, aggregators, etc).

Threefold Project Objectives:

▪ Formalizing new models specific to the design and functioning of ECos.

▪ Designing distributed algorithms and software toolboxes capable of generating local-level control policies that ensure global optimality and safety.

▪ Testing the effectiveness, performance and scalability of algorithms through extensive large-scale simulations and on a real ECo test-bed.

Multiple ECos, each equipped with an ICT infrastructure, participate in the external energy market and simultaneously self-organize through internal negotiation policies. Each ECo may include individual/collective prosumers and/or consumers and/or producers: an individual prosumer may be a household with local PV panels and storage systems, while a collective prosumer may be be a microgrid or a “sustainable district”. An ECo coordinator supervises internal operations of the associated ECo, with the aim of maximizing self-consumption, and ensuring fairness and equity to users. 

Expected Outcomes 

❖ Models for ECo sizing

❖ Models for internal operations of ECo assuming cooperative behaviours

❖ Models for external operations of multiple ECos under a common aggregator assuming cooperative or competitive behaviours

❖ Algorithms and toolboxes for ECo sizing

❖ Distributed algorithms and toolboxes for ECo operations

❖ Experimental tests on an emulated scaled-down ECo at the Smart Polygeneration Microgrid (SPM) and the Smart Energy Building (SEB) of the University of Genova - Savona Campus

❖ Realistic simulations based on real data from the Roseto Valfortore ECo

PROJECT OVERVIEW
METHODOLOGIES
WORKPLAN
WORK PACKAGES
MILESTONES & DELIVERABLES