New business models for innovative energy service bundles for residential consumers

During the recent decade, energy service companies (ESCOs) have made significant progress in liberating the economic energy saving potential in the EU, thus promoting the EU energy policies while establishing a distinct, solid and profitable business model. Nevertheless, although the impact of ESCOs to the industrial and public/service sectors is remarkable, there is insignificant relevant activity in the residential buildings sector. The scalability in this domain in hindered by cross-cutting barriers such as low energy prices, lack of information and awareness and lack of appropriate forms of finance as well as sector inherent barriers such as the limited energy intensity, ultimately averting the justification of relevant investments within the structure of present-day EPC model.

Project frESCO, aims to lift such barriers in order to elevate local energy performance optimization through innovative viable business models that will enable residential based flexibility aggregation, exploitation and remuneration, both in the form of energy efficiency and demand side management. Such business models will be realized through “Pay for Performance” contracts which aim to combine these two currently different service offerings.

The consortium of the project comprises of 9 industry stakeholders, such as ESCOs, aggregators, ICT and technology providers and engineering companies, 2 end-users (1 Cooperative and 1 Hotel) and 3 knowledgeable RTOs.

Business models developed under frESCO will be demonstrated in 4 different pilots (Spain, France, Croatian and Greece) which present diverse characteristics in terms of building typology (single-/multi-family), climate, regulation, energy consumption, energy assets, consumer groups, etc., thus facilitating the replicability of frESCO’s solutions across Europe. Overall, frESCO aims to directly achieve a primary savings of 464 MWh/yr and a reduction of 108 tCO2/yr and trigger 28.3M€ investment during the replication.

The Smart Energy Systems of Elin VERD will coordinate the Exploitation and Replication work package of the project as well as serve as the Innovation Manager for the consortium.

The project’s duration is 42 months and the allocated total budget by the European Union is 3,98 Million Euros.

© European Union, 2020

Project frESCO is funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union under Contract Number 893857.

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