Horizon 2020 joint online event: kick-off for a closer collaboration

With the goal to maximise synergies between EU Horizon 2020 funded projects, the FEVER consortium got together virtually on 19 November with their H2020 partner projects edgeFLEX, DECIDE and Platone as well as external experts to discuss the potential of local flexibilities in relation to energy communities. After reviewing similarities and differences as well as collaboration opportunities, the participants agreed on continuing to work together.

On EU and national level, the discussion on advancing the European energy system often centres around technical solutions for harvesting flexibilities and establishing a new organisational and business model that builds on a better involvement of citizens, e.g. in energy communities. Few projects tackle these issues together - the involved projects do. In order to sound out the possibilities of a closer cooperation, the main objective of the workshop was to elaborate the similarities of the four projects and to find out the differences aiming to learn from each other.

In the first part of the event, the projects as well as the concept of energy communities and approaches to flexibility management in other EU and ERA-Net SES funded projects were presented. In the second part, the partners of the different consortia discussed in three parallel breakout sessions using virtual visualisation how to cooperate in developing standards and technical solutions, how to align efforts in communicating joint messages and how to set the stage for business eco-systems beyond the funded projects.