Projects are expected to:

• Develop solutions to aggregate flexibility from different (types of) energy consumers that use different energy management systems to develop interoperable solutions to optimise the energy management systems and valorise its flexibility in wholesale markets and for balancing and/or congestion management services).
• Define and demonstrate the type of flexibility services that clusters of smart buildings and smart industrial sites can provide.
• Cooperate with (one or more) TSOs and/or DSOs, preferably making use of day-to-day operational flexibility markets (i.e. not R&I projects or regulatory sandboxes).
• Include at least 3 different energy management systems in case of industry, or 5 in case of buildings, developed by different technology providers and that use different protocols/standards/proprietary solutions for the energy management system.
• Involve at least 3 different energy system management service companies in case of industry, or 5 in case of buildings.
• Include at least 2 aggregators to ensure that developed solutions are based on standards and to avoid proprietary solutions.
• Include at least 1 home appliances producer in case of buildings. To ensure interoperability and integration into the grid, specific demonstrators will make use of operational end-to-end architectures, digital platforms and other data exchange infrastructure for the energy system being developed under ongoing Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe as well as under other EU programs such as the Digital Europe Program. Preferably semantically interoperable interactions, as enabled by the ETSI SAREF ontologies, are used.

Design and demonstrate appropriate concepts for acquiring and activating flexibility (implicit and explicit) that allow to maximally benefit from the potential of these new services. The project should demonstrate or recommend how the coordination and cooperation between TSO and DSO has to be organized to adopt the different concepts for services, products and markets.