GEDERA

Intelligent management of flexible energy demand in coupled hybrid grids (GEDERA)
File MIG-20221022

The main objective of the GEDERA project is to develop and validate the usefulness of a multi-agent tool (users and systems) to speed up the integration of renewables and flexible resources in the energy system, from the point of view of digitalization, supervision, control and participation in new markets in relation to the figure of the aggregator and local markets of energy and flexibility.

Specific objectives include:

OE1. Research and develop an architecture for the management of energy flexibility that takes into account the sectoral coupling and that allows the implementation of services in a scalable, safe and sustainable way.
OE2. Research and develop interoperable technologies for the monitoring and control of coupled hybrid energy networks.
OE3. Research and develop technologies for cybersecurity in flexible demand management applications in coupled hybrid energy networks.
OE4. Research and develop a new generation of electrical and thermal loads adapted to the provision of flexibility and enabling sectoral coupling.
OE5. Research and develop advanced algorithms for optimal planning of the operation of coupled hybrid networks with demand flexibility.
OE6. Investigate the role of demand flexibility management in current and future electricity markets.
OE7. Research and develop algorithms for applications that facilitate end-user participation in demand-side flexibility services in coupled hybrid energy networks.
OE8. Validate the results obtained in relevant environments to achieve TRL 5.

The participation of Softcrits in the GEDERA project project will focus on the development of a communications middleware designed to allow communication between agents in Fog / Edge / Cloud Computing infrastructures, which allows Softcrits to advance technologically in the solutions and services provided to its customers, in addition to continuing its line of R+D based on energy efficiency.

More specifically, Softcrits will participate in the following GEDERA project activities:

Architecture design

Softcrits will lead this task, in which an architecture design will be carried out based on the analysis of requirements of existing systems (middleware, external equipment, prediction algorithms, data sources ...).

The free software platforms will be used as a basis: Apache DITTO for the interaction of the digital twin with IoT equipment and middleware and Kafka-ML for the interaction and management of learning-based models. The design of the architecture will be carried out incrementally, implementing basic prototypes and integrating the fundamental components (middleware, monitoring equipment, prediction algorithms) to validate the technical approach as soon as possible. The system will be designed taking into account that it will be deployed at the Edge/Fog and Cloud level, for which containers and an appropriate orchestrator will be used. The architecture will be refined and enriched from the interaction with the other packages and tasks.

Interoperability and information structures

Research will be carried out on new communication protocols capable of improving current and future energy flexibility mechanisms in the market so that they are open, reliable and secure for each type of application.

Research and design information structure and semantics to optimize user-machine and machine-machine interaction.
Design an optimized and secure communications network model compatible with Fog, Cloud and Edge services and the proposed multi-agent model.
Design energy management systems (residential and non-residential) based on the protocols, semantics and communications developed in the project and that take into account the end user.
Design a high-interaction honeypot system to add an additional layer of security that also allows the analysis of potential attacks on the infrastructure in order to improve its defense systems.

Design and development of an end-user access subsystem

The objective of this task is the design and development of an end-user access subsystem that allows them to visualize, understand and participate in flexibility management. In addition, various gamification mechanisms will be implemented to involve the user in goals related to sustainability.

Prototyping and experimentation

Softcrits will lead this activity, which aims to prepare the prototypes once they have been validated in other activities, and perform the corresponding tests defined according to the experimental plan.

Experimentation will be carried out according to the hardware in the loop concept for particular use cases. In the case of coordination or aggregation use, it will be carried out as a Fog service and specific characteristics of speed, latency and accuracy of results will be taken into account by comparing the predictions with the data acquisition of the different prototypes.