At HERON, emphasis is placed on the development of innovative solutions that aim to reduce energy costs and protect the environment by minimizing the carbon footprint of its customers. With its participation in 10 European Horizon Projects and one NSRF Programme, and in collaboration with Partners from the Academia, the Applied Research and Innovation sector, the Start-up ecosystem and European Energy Companies, HERON has already developed and been piloting tools that give consumers the possibility to control their consumption, both in Electricity including electromobility, and in Natural Gas.  HERON's aim is to develop these tools into services that will allow the consumer to know how consumption is distributed among the various appliances, and how this consumption can be reduced if he/she chooses to follow the personalised savings advice provided.

With this goal in mind, HERON participates in the following programs:   

 InterConnect (Horizon 2020)

The InterConnect project pursues the development and demonstration of advanced solutions, which will allow the digitalization of buildings, homes and electricity grids based on an Internet of Things (IoT) architecture. The "smart" energy management solutions will be tested through seven pilot actions, which will take place in the countries below: Portugal, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece and France.

 iFLEX (Horizon 2020)

The basic concept of the project is the development of a digital agent, the iFLEX Assistant, who will act between consumers, the household RES energy management system and the various stakeholders. The objective of the project is to enable the consumer to achieve specific energy targets through local energy management and demand response.

BIGG (Horizon 2020)

BIGG aims to demonstrate technologies, data and data analytic techniques for more than 4,000 buildings in 6 large-scale pilot test-beds. The project is based on the following four main pillars: Building performance monitoring, Regulatory framework support, Support of investments for the energy performance of buildings, and Support of electricity grids through demand energy response.

I-NERGY (Horizon 2020)

The I-NERGY project aims to develop, escalate and demonstrate innovative applications of AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS) Energy Analytics and digital services which will be tested in 9 pilots. The scope of these applications and services is: Optimal management of energy resources and RES, Improved efficiency and reliable operation of electricity grids, such as, for example, through electromobility, Optimal risk assessment for the planning of energy efficiency investments, and Optimized participation of local and virtual energy communities.

DigiBUILD (HORIZON EUROPE)

DigiBUILD aims to develop a virtual building manager capable of handling flexibility of elastic demand (e.g., transport / heating electrification), while harnessing the flexibility potential from so-far inelastic demand (e.g., residential loads). In addition, it integrates EV charging into household demand, and exploits its flexibility via real-time advice on charge control in order to synchronize (up to a pre-defined percentage) consumption and production from RES.

DEDALUS (HORIZON EUROPE)

DEDALUS aims to develop a demand Response (DR) ecosystem that will extend consumer participation to single carrier scenarios (electricity, heat) and multi-carrier scenarios (combination of electricity, heat and gas). There is a special focus on developing services that will be able to increase social acceptance of DR, by elevating them to stakeholder status and providing them tangible value.

SCO2OP-TES (HORIZON EUROPE)

The project aims to develop and validate next-generation Power-to-heat-to-power (P2H2P) large-scale and long-duration energy storage to facilitate the integration of large volumes of renewables into EU energy systems and enhance the flexibility of fossil fuel-based power plants.

ODEON (HORIZON EUROPE)

The project aims to develop the ODEON Cloud-Edge Data Intelligence Service Platform (as well as Federated Energy Data Spaces, AI Containers, Smart Data/AIOps orchestrators), which will provide highly reliable and secure data management, processing and sharing and intelligence services to all stakeholders, enabling the resilient operation of the energy system under conditions of increased RES integration and distributed flexibility.

InEExS (LIFE2027)

InEExS aims to develop integrated energy services across sectors and carriers, and to tokenise energy saving data in a public blockchain to facilitate cooperation among market segments and actors.  InEExS promotes the development of business models and contractual schemes that facilitate the implementation of sector-integrating smart energy services and the deployment of a wide range of sustainable technologies, such as renewables (RES), electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps, and internet of things (IoT) controls for residential energy consumption (Natural Gas and Electricity). 

DECIDE (Horizon 2020 - concluded)

DECIDE aimed to a better understanding of how energy communities and energy efficiency services are established and managed. It successfully identified which kind of communications and interactions work best to encourage participation in energy communities for specific types of individuals and groups, and tested and transferred knowledge in pilot projects across Europe.

HEART (NSRF -concluded)

HEART aimed at developing an integrated solution which will allow household customers to receive real-time information about the energy consumption of their homes, while it will also provide many business and social opportunities to all interested parties. This will lead to a reduction of communication costs, and at the same time, it will offer more efficient and more cost-effective real-time solutions for energy saving.