Micro-Request-Based Aggregation, Forecasting and Scheduling of Energy Demand, Supply and Distribution (MIRABEL)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Destination: ICT for mobility, environmental sustainability and energy efficiency
Action type: Collaborative project
Countries involved: Germany,Denmark,Greece,Germany,Slovenia,Germany,Netherlands,France
Call:  (FP7-ICT-ENERGY-2009-1, 2009)
Start date: 2010-01-01
End date: 2013-04-30
Duration (months): 40.0
Total project cost (EUR): 4540046.0
EU funding (EUR): 3098006.0
Participants: 9
Project status: CLOSED

The MIRABEL project's main goal is to develop a conceptual and infrastructural approach that allows energy distribution companies to efficiently manage higher amounts of renewable energy and balance supply and demand. Currently, most renewable energy sources (RES; e.g. windmills, solar panels) pose the challenge that the production depends on external factors, such as wind speed and direction, the amount of sunlight, etc. Hence, available power from RES can only be predicted but not planned, which makes it difficult for energy distributors to efficiently include RES into their daily schedules. As an unfortunate consequence, power from RES often has to be given away for free due to a lack of demand. The objectives of the MIRABEL consortium are as follows: 1. We will develop a model of actors with certain roles in the energy market and specify data to be exchanged between these actors. 2. We will develop a concept of micro-requests to handle the energy demand and supply on a household level, together with methods - to forecast demand and supply based on historical and additional data, such as weather forecasts (both on a small scale, i.e. for households, and on a larger scale), and to update these predictions over time, - to aggregate and disaggregate the micro-requests on a regional level, and - to schedule energy production and consumption based on aggregated requests. 3. We will design a distributed, decentralised and scalable infrastructure to handle the high data load from the mass of households. A prototypical system architecture and its revision will be developed. 4. In order to test and demonstrate our approach, we will implement a demonstration system with the help of concrete trial scenarios and real-world data. These include a Transmission System Operator trial, a Local Distributor of Energy trial, and a community consumer trial. 5. Standardised data exchange is required between consumers and brokers; between producers and brokers; among brokers themselves; and between brokers, large producers/consumers and grid operators. Standardisation is pursued throughout the project. The project is led by SAP Research (Germany), a group that is very active in the area of advanced analytics and infrastructure development. SAP Research is associated to SAP, the world's leading provider of BI solutions. With Aalborg Universitet (Denmark), TU Dresden (Germany), and the Jožef Stefan Institute (Slovenia), the consortium includes two academic partners with a strong research background in data management and one leading research institute for applied research. The use case partners Energie Baden-Württemberg AG (Germany) and CRES (Greece) provide real data and facilities for testing. INEA (Slovenia) acts as a technology provider and contributes strong expertise in the energy sector. TNO (Netherlands) is a research organisation with experience in standardisation and utilities projects.

Keywords: renewable energy,micro-requests,forecasting,scheduling,smart grid,miracle