HESTIA – Holistic Demand Response Services for European Residential Communities

Despite its rising popularity, the concept of Demand Response (DR) and is still mostly limited to the large commercial and industrial facilities. This leaves a large unexplored gap regarding the considerable demand flexibility potential and millions of distributed energy assets existing in the residential sector. Additionally, invoking user engagement and behavioral change for DR represents an unsolved societal challenge, often due to barriers such as technology acceptance, use and effectiveness. This renders traditional centralized management approaches impractical and calls for new services, procedures, and tools which ensure consumers are engaged to effectively integrate this locked demand flexibility of residents into the power system.

To address and improve user engagement, the project will employ a combination of financial, environmental and social drivers, such as involving end consumers in the design process of the solutions. This would lead to developing a community engagement methodology toolset, suitable for a broader rollout. Additionally, a fully serviced ICT platform, based on advanced technological concepts such as consumer digital twin and non-intrusive data analytics, will provide personalized services for a tailored and user-friendly experience. HESTIA will attempt to bridge the current gaps between energy demand, RES (renewable energy sources) availability and grid requirements by exploring the resource flexibility in terms of cumulative energy consumption as well as distributed energy generation and storage.

HESTIA aims to provide a cost-effective solution for the next-generation demand response services which will leverage consumer engagement, energy and non-energy services, while dealing with both energy supply and demand side in a holistic manner. As residential consumers present both a big challenge and a sector with large potential, they will be enabled to play an active role in flexibility sharing and grid balancing for better operational management.To demonstrate the potential of innovative residential DR services for saving energy, reducing CO2 emissions, and bringing economic benefits across the value chain, HESTIA will develop a technical and business ecosystem that can be replicated across the EU.