Overall Potential

Coordinating smart appliances (think of your washing machine or dryer) with sustainable energy technologies (such as the solar panels on your roof) holds great potential when it comes to lowering overall energy consumption, reducing peak demand and related CO2 emissions. In addition, with the rapid spread of smart meters and new network management techniques across the EU, it has become vital to examine the energy savings and energy system optimisation potentials that could stem from intelligent appliance-network interaction.

The uptake of smart appliances will depend however on the cost-effectiveness of the systems at achieving these benefits.

Also, Smart-A will focus on balancing the cost-effectiveness of coordinating appliances and local generation technologies both at the household level and at the local electricity grid level, with the ultimate objective of presenting a single strategy taking advantage of the opportunities arising from both household-level and grid-level optimisation.

The optimisation exercise will done through a high-level Smart-A model which will be applicable to the entire European Union, taking into account all major factors that determine cost and benefits.
This forwards looking exercise will be performed for different points in time, reflecting the projected changes to the European energy systems. In addition, sets of optimisation criteria such as CO2 emissions and overall system costs will be included.