The kickoff meeting of the Intelligent Digital Renewable Energy Communities (idrECO) project took place this week. Juan Manuel Cochado and Javier Prieto from the BISITE Research Group met together with other consortium partners to discuss the first steps towards the achievement of the proposed objectives.

idrECO is an initiative that brings together several disciplines to investigate new energy use cases arising from technology-enhanced energy communities, both from a technological and economic perspective, as well as from the perspective of Social Sciences and Humanities.

As the problem of climate change becomes more urgent, countries are stepping up their rush towards net-zero emissions. As a consequence, there is widespread deployment of renewables, including the still nascent deployment of renewable energy communities in modern electricity systems, and the advent of active consumers, able to produce energy locally and actively manage their demand. New ideas about the ontology of energy systems, both in terms of their taxonomy and their interactions in the resulting energy ecosystem, are opening up new ways of thinking about energy systems.

This emerging concept is spearheading the transition from a centralised, supplier-centric structure to a more decentralised, consumer-centric scenario in the energy paradigm.

In this regard, idrECO proposes original solutions for management through digital technologies powered by computational intelligence, and to improve its flexibility through the use of battery energy storage systems oriented at RECs (REC-BESS).

Posted by Juan M. Corchado

Juan Manuel Corchado (15 May 1971, Salamanca, Spain) is Professor at the University of Salamanca. He has been Vice-Rector for Research from 2013 to 2017 and Director of the Science Park of the University of Salamanca. Elected as Dean of the Faculty of Science twice, he holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Salamanca and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of the West of Scotland. He leads the renowned BISITE (Bioinformatics, Intelligent Systems and Educational Technology) Research Group, created in 2000. Director of the IoT Digital Innovation Hub and President of the AIR Institute, J. M. Corchado is also Visiting Professor at the Osaka Institute of Technology since January 2015, Visiting Professor at the Universiti Malaysia Kelantan and Member of the Advisory Group on Online Terrorist Propaganda of the European Counter Terrorism Centre (EUROPOL). J. M. Corchado has been president of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society, and academic coordinator of the University Institute for Research in Art and Animation Technology at the University of Salamanca, as well as researcher at the Universities of Paisley (UK), Vigo (Spain) and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK). He currently combines all his activity with the direction of Master programmes in Security, Digital Animation, Mobile Telephony, Information Systems Management, Internet of Things, Social Media, 3D Design and Printing, Blockchain, Z System, Industry 4.0, Agile Project Management, and Smart Cities & Intelligent Buildings, at the University of Salamanca and his work as editor-in-chief of the journals ADCAIJ (Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal), OJCST (Oriental Journal of Computer Science and Technology) or Electronics MDPI (Computer Science & Engineering section). J. M. Corchado mainly works on projects related to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, IoT, Fog Computing, Edge Computing, Smart Cities, Smart Grids and Sentiment Analysis. He has recently been included in the board of trustees of the AstraZeneca Foundation, along with other health professionals and researchers recognised for bringing scientific knowledge closer to society.