Enabling flexibility provision by all actors and sectors through markets and digital technologies

Enflate is a Horizon Europe project which aims to provide the means for effective control of energy exchange at regional, national and international levels, enhance the communication between distributed energy sources and, to a greater extent, involve consumers/prosumers in the trading process.

Enflate aims to facilitate the shared use of renewable energy sources and increased clean energy penetration in the power system while reducing grid operating costs and increasing economic benefits. Technology-based electronic and digital technologies will enhance the flexibility and robustness of local, regional, national and cross-border distribution and transmission networks.

Enflate will empower TSOs (transmission system operators), DSOs (distribution system operators), market operators, regulators, service providers, manufacturers, academics, and consumer/prosumer interest groups to use innovative smart grid technologies, peer-to-peer consumer/prosumer marketplace platforms, cross-vector flexibility services in the energy, health and mobility sectors.

Develop platforms

During its 48-month duration, Enflate will further develop existing consumer-focused flexibility platforms and digital tools to create a new, highly interoperable Enflate platform with other Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe platforms, such as OneNet, CoordiNet, SmartNet and Interrface. The benefits of data exchange and adaptive middleware architectures will be tested in large-scale demos in Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. This will result in new flexible markets and business models, where consumers, prosumers, aggregators, TSOs, DSOs, and asset owners provide flexibility in a truly collaborative approach for sustainable energy transformation.

Demo site in Kungsbacka municipality

IVL will contribute to the project by developing and applying an energy systems optimisation model to the Swedish demo site in Kungsbacka municipality, assessing and proposing new business models, and contributing to communication and dissemination activities. The developed optimisation model will help to analyse the demo site’s flexibility options/measures and their potential to contribute to more efficient energy generation and distribution. Based on the obtained modelling results, the effects of flexibility will be extrapolated to the national level, considering the specifics of the four electricity zones SE1-SE4. The benefits of the investigated flexibility services at the district level will also be evaluated from the perspective of DSOs and TSOs.

Watch the video from the Kungsbacka demo site

Study shows good results

Nudging Flexibility is a master's thesis written as part of the Enflate project. The report studies the behaviour of the tenants at Humlevägen,Fjärås, the location of Enflate's Swedish demo site. Tenants received a nudge in the form of a daily text message informing them of the hour at which they should reduce electricity consumption the following day and reminding them of the environmental benefits of doing so. The 14 apartments in the project were compared with 134 control apartments in Kungsbacka. The results show an apparent reduction in electricity consumption on Humlevägen during the daily peak hours. You can read or download the study here, on Diva: Nudging Flexibility: The effect of an environmental nudge on demand-side flexibility for electricity among tenants External link, opens in new window., author Isa Diamant, Stockholm University.

Learn more

Read a press release on the project's actions in Fjärås, Kungsbacka: A nudge in the right direction reduced tenants' electricity usage.

You can find more information and subscribe to the project newsletter on the international project's website.