Project RESONANCE: Mobilising demand-side flexibility at large-scale

The RESONANCE project is developing a software framework to facilitate the development of standard-compliant, demand-side flexibility management solutions for customers across sectors.

“Despite the many advances made to get demand-side flexibility going at a large scale, it is still not cost-efficient to harness flexibility from distributed and small-scale flexibility assets in homes, buildings and spaces. RESONANCE wants to change this and significantly reduce the efforts and costs by making it easier to tailor Customer Energy Manager services across different consumer sectors and energy vectors” explains Project Manager, Markus Taumberger from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.  

Specified in the EN 50491-12 standard family, the Customer Energy Manager is the central concept, being the software agent that manages the flexible assets in homes and buildings via Resource Manager components and provides flexibility to the power grid. Its purpose is to maximise the benefits for customers offering flexibility and providing a more deterministic demand response, unlocking market participation. 

Need of plug-and-play development of Customer Energy Manager services 

One of the barriers to large-scale mobilisation of demand-side flexibility is the lack of a common software framework that enables plug-and-play development of Customer Energy Manager, Resource Manager and their aggregation solutions. To overcome this, the RESONANCE Software Framework provides modular catalogues of software services for Customer Energy Manager, Resource Manager and Aggregation & Market Integration in compliance with the EN 50491-12 standard family, specifically the system architecture (12-1) and semantic interoperability (12-2) standards for homes and buildings. Each independent catalogue consists of stand-alone modules built by extending, improving, and integrating existing baseline components. 

Interoperability and automated modelling of resources 

Solutions to the needs of interoperability and automated modelling and predictive control are also packaged into the catalogues. To reduce the entry barriers and costs related to communication and data exchange, the framework provides a narrow-waist layer of interoperability that builds upon open APIs and existing standards. The Common Resource Manager Interface provides the interoperability layer between the resources and the Customer Energy Manager.  

Additionally, to model the resources and manage their flexibility with minimum effort as well as to achieve a more deterministic demand response, the framework contains a modelling pipeline that combines automated machine learning with physics-based modelling to achieve accurate and robust models of the resources (Automated Modelling Pipeline module), which are utilized to tailor their optimal control (Optimal Control Module). 

Read more about the catalogues.

Collaboration and development tools 

In addition to the catalogues, RESONANCE is providing a Data and Service Marketplace that can be used to advertise and discover services, tools and data assets. The purpose is to facilitate collaboration between technology, service and data providers in developing innovative flexibility solutions. 

• If you are a technology provider, the Service Marketplace can be used to publish your services in the catalogues and promote them to flexibility service providers, system integrators or others in the energy ecosystem 

• If you are a service provider or system integrator, you can use the available configuration and deployment tools to tailor Resource Manager, Customer Energy Manager and Aggregation solutions to your customers 

• The Data Marketplace provides easy access to historical data collected within the energy ecosystem e.g., energy, sensor, control, weather and market data, thereby creating a framework in which energy stakeholders, including end users, can easily get connected with interested parties for data sharing. It also enables technology and service providers to engage with data owners and explore options for essential information exchange that could support energy sharing or flexibility solutions. 

Read more about the data and service marketplace

Finally, the catalogues are extended with additional trust, security and privacy management tools which enable 1) identity management based on Self Sovereign Identity principles, 2) enrolment of users in future ecosystem services and 3) management of authorizations for access to resources. 

Six European countries – 14 use cases 

Pilot sites in France, Germany, Greece, Slovenia, Sweden, and Finland will test and develop the RESONANCE catalogues and services which are then replicated in a second piloting phase to demonstrate the adaptability and replication potential. In the first piloting phase, which the project is currently undergoing, 14 use cases are being deployed. 

Read more about the pilots and their use cases

The piloting entails aggregation of flexibility across various consumer sectors, covering residential, public, municipal, industrial, and commercial buildings, spaces and services. It includes multiple flexible resources such as HVAC systems, PV and battery systems, EVs and white goods. It involves many stakeholders and market settings, integrating electricity with district heating to optimize energy and flexibility across different energy vectors. 

Find out more about:
EU-funded energy projects

“The aim is to create a vibrant cross-sector ecosystem that successfully deploys demand response for the benefit of the customers; enables a sustainable business for developers and providers of demand-side flexibility management solutions and facilitates a wider adoption of Customer Energy Manager, Resource Manager and their aggregation solutions in Europe and worldwide,” concludes Markus Taumberger. 

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