RESCHOOL develops strategies and tools for the incentivization and management of flexibility in energy communities with distributed resources, enhancing the collective participation of citizens in the energy transition and the relationship with stakeholders such as system operators, aggregators, or other energy communities. Two types of tools are being developed:
- social tools developed on the basis on collaboration and gamification will foster the engagement of citizens in energy communities and understand energy usage behaviour;
- technological tools that facilitate and automate the interaction with third parties in the energy value chain including their participation in energy/flexibility markets.
The developed tools will be applied and validated in 4 PILOTs that are located in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Athens and around Girona, and improve regulatory frameworks at national and EU levels, taking into account socioeconomic conditions, energy sector specifics and climate conditions. With 16 partners from 7 EU countries, RESCHOOL will foster the creation, growth and management of energy communities through customer engagement, facilitate the participation in collaborative initiatives, allow for efficient energy management, the provision of flexibility, and energy sharing. Thereby RESCHOOL increases active participation of communities in energy markets and improves their economic performance.
In the project implementation, EREF is leading the work stream on Economic Sustainability of Energy Communities, Exploitation and Replication, which includes identifying exploitable project results from each partner and develop tailor-made exploitation strategies. EREF is further in charge of demonstrating existing as well as potential economic benefits as well as barriers that prevent providing services to the system and/or being adequately remunerated. To this purpose, framework conditions are analysed, as well as changes in regulation that are required to enable the market uptake of activities that energy communities can carry out and help them achieve economic sustainability. The work stream also replicates models applied and activities conducted within the pilots to surrounding districts and municipalities, and at national scale.