Energy Communities at the heart of the 9 DATA CELLAR Validation cases

Energy communities are entities, situated in proximity to renewable energy projects, which primary mission is to deliver environmental benefits, economic and social rights. However, some countries are encountering difficulties in the process of considering these communities as legal entities. With this, the European Union is aiming to establish the European Strategy for Data and create a comprehensive framework that provides legal clarity, identifies, and removes obstacles, and includes measures for the advancement of these communities.

Within the DATA CELLAR project, there are 9 Validation Cases (VCs) that represent different Energy communities around Europe at different levels of maturity in terms of status of the energy community.

These Validation Cases cover different types of communities, from urban residential, and industrial areas, to rural and even islands. They all represent communities that are implementing innovative approaches in the energy sector, aiming to become self-sufficient and to promote a social and solidarity economy and innovation through sustainable and efficient energy consumption technologies and practices.

The VCs interact with DATA CELLAR by enriching the data space with existing both real time and historical data around the energy communities, covering different energy, as electricity, heating and cooling, gas or water; but also, non-energy vectors, such as mobility, transport or user behaviours. Besides providing provision of the facilities, they provide at the same time expertise regarding electricity networks and energy systems.

Moreover, the VCs are highly relevant for the development of the project. They take part in validating the services and tools offered by the DATA CELLAR platform, providing feedback, participating in testing and, hence being a real-world validation and contributing to supporting the development and management of other local energy communities in the EU.

In this new campaign, we will present the complete validation cases: which are the organizations involved, what are the projects about, what is their specific role in DATA CELLAR, and why are the VCs important for the project.