Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to the EU Energy Projects podcast, a podcast series from Enlighten France focusing on the clean energy transition for the European Union and the EU Commission funded energy projects that will help us achieve it. My name is Areti Daradimu. I am the editor of the EU Energy Projects podcast and your host.
Sustenance is an energy project funded by the EU Commission. It is aimed at empowering energy consumers by making it as easy as possible for them to participate in the energy transition by using smart technological concepts. Birkitte Bak Janssen, the project's coordinator and my guest for this episode, will discuss with us the concept and objectives of the project. Hi Birgita, and thank you very much for being here with me today.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Thank you and nice to be here.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Would you please describe in a few words project Sustenance?
[00:01:09] Speaker B: The project Sustenance is an idea to get small villages or neighborhoods better energy with renewable energy. Introduction to the area and where we put up a different multi energy system. So we take care of both the heat, the transportation and everything in the area based on the wishes from the customers. So they are very much involved in the development. So we do not do a technical solution without their approval, I would say.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Which needs of the EU energy grid would you say it is covering and how? I know that energy communities are very high in the EU commission's agenda right now, but could you please elaborate for us here?
[00:01:54] Speaker B: The idea is that we provide flexibility to the grids from these energy communities, so we aggregate the demands from the different customers in a way so we can provide flexibility both to the overall balancing of the grid by acting on the day ahead market, but also so we can have better capacity limits on the local grid, avoiding grid conditions on the local grid.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: So in a way you actually help the DSO also not only the energy communities, and you work as sort of a go between the two of them to help demand response flexibility, right?
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Yes, we are trying to focus on both sides, so we actually do the optimization at the private customers basis, but also to actually try to help the DSO mitigate their conditioned problems.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Do you think you can tell us in a short, let's say sentence who is involved in the project? I know that a consortium of a project is normally a big one, but can you briefly tell us who is involved?
[00:03:01] Speaker B: The partners in the project is both the research institutes and universities, but we have also the local utilities, the DSO involved, we have the municipalities involved, we have also some householding companies involved. So we have the private customers aspect in the project, and then we have some private companies industries who are developing the energy management systems that we are setting up in the local demonstration sites.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: And which countries? From which countries are they in the.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Project we are making demonstrations both in the Netherlands, in Poland, in Denmark seen from european side, but also in this project we have demonstrations in India, at three different sites in India.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: That's impressive. And we already mentioned that the target of this audience are dsos and energy communities. But are we missing anyone?
[00:03:59] Speaker B: I think we are also targeting the energy management developers because they are the ones who have to set up the system in a different size later on and develop the system so it can be replicated in many different places. So the small industry which are connected to the process are actually also very much important because they are needed to be able, able to develop this kind of control structures.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Now if I understood correctly, one of the project's objectives is to develop smart technological concepts to enable the energy transition. Can you please elaborate on that? Are concepts the same thing as solutions?
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Actually it's a concept in the first place because we want to develop it so it can be applied both in let's say a microgrid in India as well as a local energy community or local energy area in Europe. So we are putting up the concept of source and then the actual control structure at the different site might be slightly different depending on the actual regulation. So it is in the first place the concept for how we are doing it and then the actual control will be a bit local, dependent. Regarding the demonstration site.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Did you know that Enlit has another podcast? The Energy Transitions podcast is a broad ranging bi weekly podcast about the people accelerating the energy transition in Europe and beyond. You can find it on Spotify, Apple or wherever you enjoy your podcasts.
Now given the diversity of our continents, Europe's various grids and consumers mentalities or behaviors and adding in the mix India also, how plausible is it to create something for everybody? And what were the main difficulties that you faced?
[00:05:57] Speaker B: I would say the main difficulties is the regulation in the different countries and the setup there. But we can make a concept because what it all is about is to try to utilize the pv production everywhere in four countries as much as possible for the local site, taking as less as possible from the grid. So we optimize the control to use the silk consumption as possible. And in all sites we have also storage facilities. So we try to, if we have our production to store the energy and then use it later on. And then in Europe and in one of the sites in India we have of course the possibility to exchange energy also with the grid. But two of the actual sites in India is microgrids without any grid connection. So there we have to optimize it only within the grid and prioritize which demand are running now and which are not to overload the local small grid, but also to use the energy in the stores as effective as possible.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: So you would see it as a non interconnected island. I mean the same way that we use non interconnected islands in Europe? Yes, for India. Wow, that's impressive.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: So even though in Europe we try to operate it as maybe autarkic and isolated, we have of course the backup with the grid, but in India we only have the backdrop in the battery, and then if that is empty, there are no energy until next day with sunshine.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Fair enough. You mentioned, however, regulation, and I want to come back to that a little bit, what are we missing in Europe? We can't obviously discuss about what is missing in India, but what are we missing in Europe when it comes to regulation to facilitate projects like sustenance, not only on an EU commission level, perhaps even on a local authorities level.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: I think one of the main obstacles that we have seen is actually how to form a local energy community. Because even though the EU regulation on low energy communities is from 2021 or 2022, it is not really effectuated in the local areas, and there are so much demand from the citizens to fulfil it. So a much clearer and easier way to go for the citizen wanting to form a local energy community is actually one of the obstacles that we have seen.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: There are four pilots, right, for demos, let's say, in the project. And one of the main objectives is to show how the same technological concept, for example, the decoupling of different energy vectors, storage solutions, demand response, etcetera, can be applied in each case, despite this differences.
Can you elaborate on that? Can you tell us how are you going to make that possible, or how you did make it possible?
[00:09:04] Speaker B: Let us say exactly about this, that all places have PvE, we have heat pumps, we have EV charging, we have storages. And the main concept is that we want to have as much self consumption from the pv system as possible. So the overall heretical control of when to use energy and how to schedule the individual demand is more or less the same. No matter if the heat bump is used for drying food products in India, or it is used for heating in Denmark and the Netherlands, and the same for the car chatting, we can schedule it and move it a bit so everything is not operating at the same time. And that is the case in all four demonstrations countries. So this concept about using the self consumption, avoiding using fossil fuels and so on, and be much more dependent on the pv and the stories is the same everywhere.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Which tags are you focusing on to advance your strategy? Is it digital twin or something completely different?
[00:10:12] Speaker B: We are building up models and then we have set a kind of theoretical control structure and using forecast to actually predict what is going on for the next period. So if you are calling this digital twin or not, it's a bit about the wording, but we are making models, we are making forecast models to optimize and know when to use the energy directly from the pv or when to store it and when to use it directly from the battery and so on. So this is the message we are applying.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: And you're getting your data from smart meters, SCADA or all the above. What?
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Yeah, all places that are smart meters that are measuring sensors and devices everywhere to do it, no matter if it's India or it's Netherlands or Poland. Yeah, so some part, for instance, in Poland a lot of the budget was actually used to set up the smart meters, whereas in Netherlands and Denmark the smart meters was already there, more or less. And then you just use the data in your new energy management system.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: So basically you chose some communities in Poland and you made sure that they had smart meters or you actually placed the smart meters for them.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: In Poland, we placed new smart meters and new measurement devices. In Denmark and Netherlands, there was already a smart meters. In India, everything is new because they have no grid at all.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Fair enough. Now the project is ending this year, right? Yeah. And do you have any lessons learned that, let's say some wisdom that you can perhaps pass along to new projects about the issues, the difficulties that you had to encounter, but also the good stuff, like what did you get out of it?
[00:12:08] Speaker B: I think we have got a very strong community between the researchers, but also the learnings from the different countries about how to tackle this kind of setup, because there is a very big difference if you are in India or if you are in Europe. But when it comes to all many of the findings and the message to do the energy management is the same. So this about learning how to use it in different applications is what we can really use as a guideline for others as well. And then also this about having the citizens involved. So it is their wishes that we actually are trying to fulfill. So they are satisfied with the solution from the start on is also a very big learning that you have to do the technical solutions based on the input from the citizens, because then they must better adapt the system and really use it also in the future instead of we are setting up some technical solution that they might not really use in the end because it was not really their wishes. But here we make a kind of bottom up so we have much higher user satisfaction and understanding of what is going on because this understanding is also needed to really use the different technical solutions that we have set up.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: All in all, was it a positive experience this journey with the European Commission on this project? Would you recommend it to other people in your position?
[00:13:47] Speaker B: It was really a nice learning and a very good cooperation between the different countries. And this discussion about how regulation applies in different setups and how people behave in different countries is also a very big learning of the project. That these SSH inputs is really important to make it able to be replicated anywhere else later on because it is a bit even though the same technical solution applied, the regulation and upheaval make it slightly different. And this learning is actually something that we will going forward in guidelines as well as a project result beside the actual innovation from our technical industrial partners.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: And on this positive note, Birgit, I want to thank you very much for this very interesting discussion.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Thank you very much.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: You've been listening to the EU Energy Projects podcast, a podcast brought to you by enliter and friends. You can find us on Spotify, Apple and the enlit World website. Just hit subscribe and you can access our other episodes too. I'm Aletti Daradimo. Thank you for joining us.
