Six Swiss companies contribute to a recently launched European research project that will develop a centralized system for Demand Response service provisioning based on aggregation, forecasting, and scheduling of electricity consumption. The pro-ject, called SEMIAH, has been granted € 3.7 million from the European Union, and will last three years.
Imagine houses capable of shifting their energy consumption from high energy-consuming loads to off-peak periods with high generation of electricity from renewable energy sources. This would lower electricity bills, improve the integration of renewable energy sources, and offer higher stability of the electricity grid. The benefits would go to residential customers, energy utilities and society in general through savings in carbon dioxide emissions and fuel costs as well as reduced investments in distribution grid expansions and electricity peak generation plants.
The EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) project "Scalable Energy Management Infrastructure for Aggregation of Households (SEMIAH)" has been launched to reach precisely these goals. The consortium behind the SEMIAH project aims to pursue a major technological, scientific and commercial breakthrough by developing a novel ICT infrastructure for the implementation of demand response in households and to increase energy efficiency. The smart grid research underpinning the project is not only for Europe but for the entire world, enabling scientific communities to work together supporting individual collaborative initiatives in ways that up until now were unthinkable.
The project's innovative approach is based on the development of an open framework that will promote an environment for the deployment of smart grid services for households. A centralized system for demand response service provisioning based on aggregation, forecasting and scheduling of electricity consumption will be developed. Furthermore, the project delivers a secure demand response solution for control of electrical loads in households at a competitive price, supported by new business models that provide incentives and benefits for players in the electricity market and residential customers.
Six Swiss companies participate in the SEMIAH consortium of twelve partners from four European countries. The partners have a diverse background in ICT, energy, and telecommunications and jointly possess the technological skills and competence needed to overcome the identified challenges and to drive this ambitious project to achieve successful results.
- From ICT: Aarhus University (DK), Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique CSEM (CH), University of Agder (NO), and Haute Ecole Spécia-lisée de Suisse Occidentale (CH).
- From energy: Fraunhofer IWES (DE), Agder Energi Nett (NO), SEIC Teledis (CH), EnAlpin (CH), Misurio (CH), and Develco Products (DK).
- From telecommunications: Devoteam Solutions (NO) and netplus.ch (CH).
