How Local Energy Communities are shaping future of renewable energy?

The future of the energy market will increasingly rely on Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and Local Energy Communities (LECs) which dynamically generate, consume, or store electricity/energy. This article explores how projects like GENTE will accelerate the adoption of clean energy by inspiring and influencing new & existing LECs to opt for a higher share of renewables at improved efficiency, reliability, affordability and environmental performance.?

What is Project GENTE?

GENTE is a multi-million dollar, multi-national project. The project aims to develop services and applications (the LEC toolbox) for Local Energy Communities (LECs)?to improve their abilities to optimize, control, and manage energy resources in a federated manner. It leverages advanced technologies, including the internet of things (IoT), distributed ledger technology/Blockchain, edge processing, and artificial intelligence for autonomous energy resource management.?

The LEC toolbox will automatically implement the optimization strategies to control and manage the energy mix at the LEC level. It will minimize the grid dependencies for local power needs, significantly reduce the power curtailment by the grid, and maximize the injection of electricity into the grid considering the flexibility and stability provisions of the network. The project also aims to bring intelligence to distributed energy assets by considering users’ behaviors, data privacy, and inter-operability. The project will deliver a decision support tool and innovative services to the LECs that will enhance the economic viability of LECs and promote engagements of end-users and self-governance. The project will be implemented and validated in 6 different sites across three different countries.

SmartHelio is a technology partner of this international research project GENTE. The project brings together an international consortium of highly qualified partners comprising need owners, citizens, scientific partners, technology providers, living labs, and technology demonstration sites.?

Need for projects like GENTE

The future of the energy market will increasingly rely on Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and Local Energy Communities (LECs), which dynamically generate, consume, or store electricity/energy. This creates a need for a flexible electrical network with a two-way power flow system. The existing LECs and DER systems are not intelligent enough to have such capabilities where they can optimize energy evacuation and self-consumption in an autonomous manner. Therefore, the requirement of a reliable, and intelligent solution that can transform these passive users into more active, dynamic, and sustainable Prosumers will be attempted and fulfilled in GENTE Project.

The GENTE project has received funding in the framework of the joint programming initiative ERA-Net Smart Energy Systems’ focus initiative Digital Transformation for the Energy Transition, with support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 883973.

Disclaimer: The content and views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinion of the ERA-Net SES initiative. Any reference given does not necessarily imply the endorsement by ERA-Net SES.