The European Union, in general, and Spain, in particular, are currently facing major energy-related challenges. Climate change, decarbonisation and reduction of fossil fuels, an increasing dependence on imports (especially aggravated by the current war situation in Ukraine), a volatile market that periodically marks historic highs and the need to definitively promote renewable energies are fundamental pillars for a necessary energy transition.
Within this process of energy paradigm change, small consumers, be they individuals, local administrations or SMEs, and their capacity to produce energy from renewable sources such as solar energy, thanks to increasingly affordable and efficient installations, will play a fundamental role motivated by the collective use of their production capacity. This situation will undoubtedly lead to the emergence of the first Energy Communities.
Energy communities are primarily a social concept, where the governance of citizens, SMEs and local authorities takes precedence and where multiple activities can be carried out: producing, consuming, storing, sharing or selling energy. Self-consumption or distributed generation, for example, are an important factor in saving money for many families, especially for the most vulnerable ones, thus being able to tackle energy poverty. This makes use of the community’s electricity generation capacity, which results in improved energy efficiency and favours the development of sustainable mobility models and future smart demand response management systems. The environmental benefits are important, with a reduction in energy consumption, an increase in distributed renewable energy or a reduction in fossil fuels used, as well as the social benefits, with citizen empowerment, the creation of local employment, the creation of a community fabric or the reinvestment of the benefits of the activity in priority aspects for the community.
It is within this incipient field where the CENIT project is framed, whose general objective is the creation and development of a digital platform for the management of smart energy communities that is capable of digitising all the processes associated with them through a Cloud tool by applying Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain tools on a Big Data architecture.
Innova IRV participates in the CENIT project, which has been approved within the Digital Technologies Projects line of the Call for Aid to Innovative Business Groups 2022b (AEI) granted to Smart City Cluster by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade of the Government of Spain.
