Local and regional energy systems are expected to become essential partners for distribution system operators and significant contributors to energy system stability. Typically, power peaks can be buffered by the grid, but the unpredictable nature of renewable energy sources, the unexploited efficiency of gas, electricity, and biofuels in operating buildings, and electric vehicles concurrencies lead to unknown correlations. There are no strategies available for communities to manage distributed energy resources, help optimizing local efficiency, pool, orchestrate, and command flexibilities in an increasingly digital world, and offer that flexibility on the markets. Building on existing knowledge of national and regional projects, together with stakeholders in NGOs, industry, and ESCOs, we investigate novel services for communities to generate, consume, provide demand response, and storage in a pan-European setting, including smart cities, residential, industrial, and data center users. The Austrian share of the project is devoted to the development of a common reference architecture for local/regional energy communities. It will be applied and tested in a mixed industrial and residential area in Vienna based on real data contributed by the project partners and their clients. A central aspect will be the technical and economical assessment of regional storage batteries as a means to increase flexibility and enable new services.
