LIGHTNESS

Project Summary

LIGHTNESS will increase the Renewable Energy hosting capacity, to securely achieve the EU target for 2030, by supporting the market uptake of Citizen Energy Communities through a turnkey social engagement, regulatory roadmap, low-cost technological package and innovative business models to unlock the full flexibility potential, reduce the final energy consumption and CO2 emissions and bring economic, social and environmental benefits to the communities and across the energy value chain.

The LIGHTNESS solution will elaborate and execute ambitious end users engagement plans for the involved sites with continuous iterations and solution adaptation to achieve a direct engagement of +500 households and +30 tertiary buildings and an immediate replication potential to over 70,000 persons. 

LIGHTNESS will create digital twins for holistic assessment of 5 Citizen Energy Communities (CECs) case studies across 5 countries to be then deployed and monitored. The different regulatory and policy frameworks allowed us to exchange best practices and provide road maps for the authorities. Overall, LIGHTNESS will engage +3000 end users, professionals, policy makers in EU, will consent a minimum 25% increase of renewable hosting capacity by making available up to 20% of flexibility in peak times from residential and tertiary buildings, will reduce up to 30% the Prosumers and CECs energy cost and up to 30% of CAPEX and OPEX costs for DSOs. 

IES' Role

The LIGHTNESS Holistic CEC Simulation Tool will be built upon the IES ICL Digital Twins platform to enable sustainability analysis of communities. Using the IES software, missing consumption and generation data can be created along with the ability to disaggregate consumption data and provide weather  data  and  indoor  climate  conditions  when  this is not  available  in  the  pilots.  IES will also enable  the  evaluation  of various CEC implementation scenarios including RES penetration options, and identify the optimal scenario based on community preferences  and  limitations.  This  information  will  be  presented  in  a  3D  cloud  based  interactive  community  information  and assessment model to engage with local community stakeholders. A connection with the overall LIGHTNESS platform will be facilitated to allow the transfer of data required to enable the initial operational simulation before deploying the solution in the pilot CECs.

Test Sites

• Heerugoward & Delft, Residential + small commercial, Netherlands
• Rovaltain business park, Commercial and offices, France
• Cagliari smart condo, mulit-apartment residential, Italy
• Wrocław, Social Housing, Poland
• Alginet, Commercial and Residential, Spain