Cooperative ENergy Trading System (CENTS)

The Cooperative ENergy Trading System (CENTS) is a collaborative project coordinated by the IERC and will rely on the industry experience from Smart MPower, mSemicon and Community Power, in addition to the research capabilities of UCC, NUIG, and DIT. It is a disruptive technology platform for the electricity sector where consumers and communities will be empowered with the necessary infrastructure to generate their own electricity, earn from the electricity generation, and finally, to be an integral part of decarbonizing their homes and communities for sustainable living.

CENTS is the only project supported under the Energy, Climate Action and Sustainability priority area. It provides a software solution for a blockchain-enabled cooperative peer-to-peer energy trading platform and proposes necessary hardware requirements and market and regulatory strategies.

The CENTS blockchain enabled cooperative P2P energy trading platform addresses several of the National Strategic Outcomes (NSO) such as Transition to a low-carbon and climate resilient society (NSO 8), A Strong Economy Supported by Enterprise, Innovation and Skills (NSO 5), Compact Growth (NSO 1), Enhanced Regional Accessibility (NSO 2), and Strengthened Rural Economies and Communities (NSO 3) as targeted by Project Ireland 2040.

BIM4EEB

BIM4EEB aims to foster the renovation industry by developing an attractive and powerful BIM management system with BIM-based toolset able to support designers in the design and planning phase, construction companies to efficiently carry out the work and service companies to provide attractive solutions for building retrofitting. The BIM management system combined with the tools will also facilitate the decision making and the asset management for public and private owners due to the exploitation of augmented reality and the use of updated digital logbooks. BIM4EEB will deliver an innovative BIM management system with linked data and a set of five tools, as follows:

• Tool 1 – Digital tool for fast mapping of buildings
• Tool 2 – BIM-assisted energy refurbishment assessment tool
• Tool 3 – Human-Machine interface tool
• Tool 4 – Tool for connecting BIM models and BACS (Building Automation Control Systems)
• Tool 5 – Fast tracking tool for renovation operations

This system will increase semantic interoperability between software and stakeholders involved along the overall renovation process (design, planning, construction, performance assessment and management). The methodology and the BIM management system will be validated in three demonstration buildings in Italy, Poland and Finland by two public administrations and two general contractor companies. Inhabitants will benefit by the increase of building performances, quality and comfort. Overall, BIM4EEB targets the reduction of least 20% of renovation time, 15% the average renovation cost, 10% of net primary energy use for a typical residential apartment and a reduction from 3 to 1.5 working days required for a deep energy audit. The developed best practices and guidelines for BIM adoption for public administrators and private stakeholders will be the bases of extensive dissemination actions to support the wide uptake of the project results and ensuring acceptance of BIM4EEB toolset by all stakeholders.

EnerPort

Problem statement
In this project peer to peer energy trade models will be developed to support energy trade among microgrids. Trade models such as auctions, coalition formation and other non-cooperative games will be researched to fit the case of energy trade which must satisfy the physical aspects of energy distribution. Payment systems will be investigated to support energy trading using cryptocurrencies or third party trading. Energy trade mechanisms will be evaluated with an integrated simulation environment modelling the energy distribution network and using a cloud based implementation of blockchain with smart meters.

Project Objectives
Market models for peer to peer energy trade
- Theoretical development of double auction, coalition formation and non-cooperative game for peer to peer energy trade.
- Integration of Blockchain simulator with OpenDSSsimulator for energy distribution network.
- Implementation of Blockchain with Open Energy Monitor and smart meters.

Design and bench demonstration of residential hardware and software platforms
- Demonstrate a functional interface between the blockchain simulator and residential smart metering and smart appliances.
- Develop a smart home bench demonstration in the Power Electronics Research Centre (PERC) laboratory in NUI Galway.
- Create use cases which demonstrate the triggering of a blockchain-based P2P energy trades based on measurements from home smart meter in order to carry out a full end-to-end simulation with hardware in the loop.

Co-simulation of blockchain transactions and electricity networks
- Develop a new software tool for the co-simulation of electricity distribution networks and blockchain-based peer-to-peer energy trading.
- Analysis of the electricity distribution network impacts of P2P energy trading in typical LV residential distribution network.
- Release of co-simulation tool under Creative Commons license and publication of one international conference and one international journal paper disseminating these results.

Outcomes
- Market models for peer to peer energy trade
- Design and bench demonstration of residential hardware and software platforms
- Co-simulation of blockchain transactions and electricity networks
- Market and scenario analysis, case studies, policy and regulation

Impacts of research
- This project will provide benefits to industry partners by developing and demonstrating detailed use cases and applications for products and services in the area of peer-to-peer energy trading using distributed ledger technology.
- It will demonstrate the hardware and software required in order to implement peer-to-peer energy trading in the distributed gridin a laboratory environment and through extensive blockchain simulations. This will allow industry to test peer-to-peer energy trading applications in order to better understand the future potential and applications of the technology in the energy domain.
- The results of this project will help to accelerate the development and deployment of the technology on a wide scale, and improve the competitiveness of industry in Ireland in what is a key future growth area.

Project Mentions / Media

• Silicon Republic
• Tech Central
• Irish Examiner
• Irish Tech News
• Tyndall National Institute

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IEA EBC Annex 70 – Building Energy Epidemiology

What is Annex 70?
Annex 70 is an international collaboration of researchers, industry and government from across the globe who are working to develop methods for improving the empirical evidence on energy demand in the building stock.

What will Annex 70 do?
Annex 70 will focus on identifying, reviewing, evaluating and producing leading edge methods for studying and modelling the building stock including: data collection techniques on energy use, building features and occupant features, and building morphology; analysis of smart meter energy data, building systems, and user behaviour; and modelling energy demand among sub-national and national building stocks.

Annex Aim
The Annex focuses on the analyses of real building energy use at scale and the emerging field of energy epidemiology, which seeks to develop robust approaches to such analyses.

The purpose of the Annex is to support member countries in the task of developing realistic transition pathways to dramatic reductions in energy use and carbon emissions associated with their buildings by:
- Comparing across the national approaches to developing building stock data sets, building stock models, and to addressing the energy performance gap in order to identify lessons that can be learned and shared;
- Establishing best practice in the methods used for gathering and analysing real building energy use data; and,
- Evaluating the scope for using real building energy use data at scale to inform policy making and to support industry in the development of low energy and low carbon solutions

ExpertMV

Problem statement
High Measurement and Verification costs and a lack of transparency in energy savings calculations have in inhibited growth in Energy Performance Contracting and the ESCO market. Reliable software tools could help overcome these barriers by providing a scientific approach to the calculation of energy savings. Existing tools generally contain calculations and algorithms that are opaque and are not available for inspection,and the reliability of their energy savings figures is not known. This lack of transparency impedes the building of trust with the client.

Project Objectives
- A reliable and cost effective means of analysing energy data and of verifying energy savings.
- A systematic approach to executing investment grade energy audits.
- A transparent, innovative and scientific means of Measurement and Verification of savings

Impacts of research
- Assess the level of uncertainty associated with savings calculations, enabling clients to make decisions about energy efficiency investments.
- Deliver a software tool that will provide a reliable approach to executing energy audits and offer a more transparent means of verifying savings.
- The project will assess the reliability of the ExpertMV software and of the algorithms used, by comprehensively testing in selected sites.