A second event for the Eemnes’ local energy community took place last week. On Thursday the 2nd of September, Eemnes municipality together with Eemnes Energy Cooperative, Energievan.nu and Bax & Company hosted the first face to face gathering for the participants of the “LEF in Eemnes” pilot. In November 2019 Eemnes held its first citizens’ event where citizens were invited to participate in the LEF pilot. The aim of this second event was to hear about the citizens’ experience in participating in the pilot so far and discuss future developments in the innovation trial.
We published a report about the event on our website, you can read the full article by clicking on the button below:
From an implementation point of view, in January and February of 2020 after the first event, around 50 data measurement gateways were installed in Eemnes households. This allowed for the Eemnes Energie and its partners to collect measurements on citizens energy use and simulate various business cases for the local energy community. At the end of July 2021, the pilot participants were finally granted the option to switch from their current energy provider to the Eemnes Energie contract and start sharing energy with their neighbours. Today, 10 households have already switched their energy contract to the energy cooperative.
Over the course of a year spanning from the 1st of March 2020 to the 1st of March 2021, the 50 homeowners collectively produced 53.000 kWh of surplus green energy, of which simulations showed that almost 18 per cent could be consumed locally if the local market is enabled. The project aims to now boost this percentage even more by applying different pricing mechanisms inside of the local energy market by installing additional flexible assets at community boundaries.
In the coming months Gemeente Eemnes, the local municipality, together with its partners will be hosting additional events for interested citizens in the area while collecting evidence on the benefits of a real-life functioning energy market model.
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