inBETWEEN goes beyond currently available ICT technologies used for inducing the end User behaviour change towards more energy efficient lifestyles by simultaneously assisting Users to IDENTIFY energy wastes, LEARN how they could conserve energy and MOTIVATE them to act. Apart from detecting energy saving opportunities and offering various incentives for Users’ behaviour change, great part of the motivation aspect will also be associated with the provided ability and means to act through inBETWEEN solution. The overarching technological objective which is to deliver cost-effective solution that brings added value, without significant disruption of everyday activities, through the collaborative inBETWEEN cloud based platform offering advance energy services. It allows Users to integrate their building’s connected devices and systems with advance energy analytics and optimisation services to create a comprehensive recommendation and feed-back solution which will facilitate further the behaviour change towards more energy and cost efficient daily routines. A significant demonstration activity in a range of real life pilot locations in EU with diverse public set-ups, which differ in terms of size, type, climate and patterns of use, will offer the necessary technology validation.

RESPOND will aim to deploy and demonstrate an interoperable, cost effective, user centred solution, entailing energy automation, control and monitoring tools, for a seamless integration of cooperative DR programs into the legacy energy management systems. In this endeavour, RESPOND will be leveraged upon an integrated approach for real-time optimal energy dispatching, taking into account both supply and demand side, while exploiting all energy assets available at the site. Owing to its flexibility and scalability, RESPOND solution will be capable of delivering a cooperative demand response at both building and district level. To provide a seamless integration of all DR enabling elements and ensure a high replication potential, RESPOND will be leveraged upon open standards for interoperability with smart home devices and automation systems, connectivity and extendibility towards smart grid and third party services such as for provision of energy prices, weather forecasts, etc. Underpinned by the smart energy monitoring infrastructure, RESPOND will be able to perform reliable energy data analytics and forecasting in order to detect potential energy conservation opportunities, and to adapt, in real time, to the operational environment considering indoor and outdoor conditions, while retaining the requested comfort levels. Through the interaction with the end users, RESPOND will aim to raise their awareness by delivering measurement driven suggestions for energy demand reduction and influence their behaviour making them an active indispensable part of DR loop. In order to demonstrate the high replication potential, RESPOND will target different types of residential buildings, situated in different climate zones, having different forms of ownership (both rental as well as home-owners), population densities and underlying energy systems.

HESTIA aims to provide a cost-effective solution for the next-generation DR services which will leverage the consumer engagement, energy and non-energy services, while dealing with both energy supply and demand side in a holistic manner. HESTIA intends to engage with residential consumers representing a still largely untapped sector, while enabling them to play an active role in flexibility sharing and grid balancing. HESTIA will enable residential DR services through: (i) exploitation of energy demand flexibility by engaging the consumers in demand-side management activities, and (ii) valorisation of energy efficiency in multi-carrier energy dispatching and optimal operation of building systems. HESTIA will exploit the consumer engagement as part of cooperative DR strategy at the community level, i.e. clusters of individual consumers and prosumers. To motivate the consumers to actively participate, HESTIA will leverage the financial, environmental and social drivers, while cross-fertilizing them to maximize the impact. HESTIA will involve the residents in the designing of the solutions through participatory co-design processes. HESTIA will create community engagement methodology and organisational tools with a high acceptance, that can be replicated and provide the corresponding tailored toolsets for a broader rollout. HESTIA will exploit the aggregated energy resource flexibility at the demand-side, in terms of cumulative energy consumption, distributed energy generation and storage, to better manage the disparity between energy demand, RES availability and grid requirements. User-personalized services will be delivered via a fully service-oriented, flexible ICT platform, underpinned by agent-based concepts, consumer digital twin and non-intrusive data analytics. This way, HESTIA will set the foundation for an open marketplace and a new grid reality, while steering consumer engagement according to the grid requirements and promoting RES and sustainable behaviour.