ENLIT and eCREW – A match

eCREW had many great opportunities for dissemination by joining the Enlit Conference 2022 in Frankfurt on the 29^th Nov. and 30^th of Nov. 2022.

Already the first day started with an internationally streamed “Podcast” (listen the full episode here!) where Dr. Johannes Slacik was able to introduce eCREW as an additional business model the legal frameworks of renewable energy communities (RECs) and citizen energy communities (CECs). A main focus of the podcast was laid up the business model development and the enablers and barriers. And clearly, the national differences in the EU countries make it difficult to standardize one business model to fit all. It depends mainly on the national regulations and legal framework in each country, hence, we have yet little similarities but using PV panels as renewable energy source. And even here we have more sun in Spain and less PV-energy in Germany to account for. We have identified enablers and barriers for adjusting our eCREW business model accordingly, e.g., digital incompatibilities with smart meters or regulatory differences (like in Spain or Turkey it is not easy finding Prosumers as it is in Germany.

Therefore, it was a good question by the interviewer Areti Ntaradimou: “What should we change when it comes to regulation in order to enable energy communities? And here I intend both on a European (EU Commission) and a local (Local Authorities) level”. And yes, on an EU-level: a unified system for a regulatory and legal framework will help to provide incentives for bottom-up developments, like ECs, – incentives such as open energy sharing and selling on the energy market. The EU means to foster the development, but quite some nations are still not adjusting to alleviating current restrictions and bureaucratic procedures for setting up ECs. On a national level: incentive setting like offering grid fee subsidies, expanding micro-grid interoperability, renewable energy installation subsidies and providing incentives and opportunities for this development.

The podcast was a great start for eCREW in the Enlit Conference. But not minor was the opportunity to join the BRIDGE Panel Session representing the Chair of the Working Group for “Consumer and Citizen Engagement”. Dr. Johannes Slacik introduced the three subgroups of the working group to a great and interactive audience of approx.. 40 participants. Since eCREW is part of all three subgroups regarding “gender and strategies of engagement”, “smart tools and digitalization” and Indicators of engagement”, Dr. Slacik had a very good overview of the current developments and results in the subgroups.

In that sense, eCREW was mentioned a couple of times as one of the innovative projects for the energy transition especially in regard to energy efficiencies and consumer and citizen engagement. The panel took about 60 minutes and the get together and chatting afterwards was much appreciated by everyone, since we usually only meet online.

So, we like to say thank you to the BRIDGE Team for having given us this opportunity to present the WG and eCREW simultaneously.

A final highlight was the opportunity to speak in a Democratization Hub Session that was titled: Energy Communities – Enabling energy efficiency.

It seemed as though all previous speakers just called forth the eCREW model. This only got to show how timely and innovative the eCREW model is. We had again about 40 interested participants in the session listening to the presentation, where Dr. Johannes Slacik showed the decentralized energy community developments with the possibility of integration through collective administrative entities such as energy utilities.

Hence, the eCREW model allows to foster the four declared drivers of the energy transition: decentralization, digitalization, integration and decarbonization. eCREW presents an all-in-one concept. The interactive discussion and questions by the audience were a fantastic sign of how needed this model is. Still the reception of energy utilities to implement the eCREW model appears to be hesitant so far. But we found a few future collaborators and look forward to engaging with them.

A recording from eCREW presentation at ENLIT 2022 follows.

The afternoon of the 30^th of Nov. eCREW had planned their Follower Community Kick-Off Event as a side event of the Enlit. We had five possible Follower Communities join the four hours event. The recordings of the event and a follow-up report can be found on the eCREW website news section.