About
Digitalisation and the Energy Transition
Digital technologies are key to empowering citizens in the energy transition, but society struggles to keep pace. Acceptance of these technologies is crucial, focusing on user benefits and experiences to ease consumer onboarding. Developing innovative tools for engagement and literacy is essential. Social innovation tools, multi-disciplinary approaches, and engaging policymakers, the private sector, civil society, and citizens are necessary for a smooth transition.
Most users don’t understand the complexity of a modern energy grid and are faced with decisions based on complex concepts. They need to grasp variable tariffs, self-consumption, trading opportunities, load-shifting, and more. With more renewable energy sources coming online, the smart grid will increasingly rely on active consumer participation to stay balanced. Simplifying digital platforms and providing seamless omnichannel experiences through automated services are vital to minimizing user hassle.
EU-DREAM designs and implements innovative digital technologies to assist citizens in exploring all the digitalisation possibilities. It will help both non-experienced and experienced citizens to increase control over energy use, providing them with an active role in the just energy transition, and supporting easy access to energy and flexibility markets.
Moreover, incorporating Digital Twins (DT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), users’ interaction with digital platforms will be vastly simplified, empowering them with a user-friendly visualisation environment with oral control instructions. Multi-disciplinary approaches for consumer engagement in energy policy, reflected by the diversity of LLs will be offered together with social innovation tools.
In the end, each user would need its own electricity ombudsman.
Project Objectives
Empowering Consumers with Data-Driven Solutions
Development of data-driven cross-sector integrated services, solutions and products using data sources from energy and non-energy sectors that empower consumers in the energy transition, integrating all data streams into an innovative EU-DREAM data-driven federation of platforms.
Digital Twin (DT) Models
Development of novel DT models and infrastructure of household energy consumers that make use of profiling models to help consumers, citizens, energy suppliers, aggregators and energy communities to optimise data-driven sector-oriented services and to enhance digital energy literacy.
AI and NLP Innovations
Development of a ground-breaking AI-based assistant tool and NLP-based intermediator integrated with the DT infrastructure, providing information and suggestions to the users and allowing them to use layperson’s terms to express expectations on the energy performance and cost of the household.
Secure and Interoperable Data Sharing
Development of a cloud-based data sharing platform for searching, accessing, and using energy and non-energy-related data, ensuring security, interoperability and the seamless integration of all technical modules, and supporting social and behavioural user-centric scenarios.
Simplified Digital Platforms
Development of new AI-powered and simplified digital platforms for energy services to empower non-experienced consumers, supplemented by an energy marketplace digital platform for more experienced users who can engage in peer-to-peer (P2P) physical or financial energy trading.
User-Friendly digital tools
Development of digital visualisation and access tools to allow citizens to visualise and access all the energy-related data generated, being user-friendly and able to adapt to the diverse requirements of trust and heterogeneous user profile types, promoting consumer interaction and engagement.
Innovative Market Mechanisms
Development of a set of novel market mechanisms for energy and flexibility (implicit and explicit) to support consumers to maximally use the new digital technologies enabled by AI applications, supporting other market actors in the adoption, use and integration of digital tools.
Consumer-Centric Approaches
Development of novel consumer-centric approaches to identify the requirements for products, services and business models from a multi-commodity and cross-sectorial perspective, to support AI-powered digital tools used by consumers and citizens, assessing the impact on market efficiency.
Improving Energy Literacy
Development of digital empowerment skills and energy literacy of the end-users, intertwining new technological developments with relevant Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) expertise to facilitate citizens’ participation (including vulnerable consumers) in the use of the new digital tools tested in six Living Labs (LLs) from six EU countries.
Expected Outcomes
The impact of EU-DREAM will be highly visible and remarkable, making very significant contributions towards consumer-centric solutions and the effective uptake of digital services.
Impact
Scientific Effects
The EU-DREAM-acquired know-how, namely the data gathered from the 6 LLs, will have great importance for the scientific study of the effects of a system-wide digitalisation energy action, promoting the cooperation between digital and energy stakeholders.
This data will be particularly useful to study the contribution of the DT models for energy efficiency improvements, the changes in users’ engagement throughout the day, the potential grid support effects, and the impacts of a system dominated mainly by AI-driven agents on market efficiency.
Economic/Technological Effects
EU-DREAM-based new easy-to-use digital platforms will promote consumer engagement in energy sustainability and provide consumers the ability to attain efficiency gains and cost minimisation in energy usage, bringing them tangible economic benefits.
It will also increase the market participation of citizens, effectively increasing their profits. The technical solutions for data-driven services address genuine consumers’ and communities’ needs/expectations. Interoperability enabled by technical design will ease the replication and scalability.
Societal Effects
EU-DREAM will support EU’s ambition of putting the consumers at the centre of the energy system. The collection of data from consumers makes it possible to identify different practices adopted to create new efficient social interactions and foster consumer awareness based on cross-fertilization, contributing to demand-side flexibility.
The digital platforms can increase consumer engagement in energy sustainability, decrease environmental footprint and CO2 emissions, and increase participation of multiple user groups, including vulnerable consumers (energy poverty).
