ELEXIA is an ongoing Horizon Europe-funded project moving from tool development towards real-world demonstration, testing how integrated energy systems can become more flexible, resilient, and cost-effective
As ELEXIA progresses towards the final phase of its Horizon Europe project, the consortium is moving beyond the development of individual tools and towards demonstrating how they can work together in real-world energy systems. The project is developing and demonstrating tools for planning and managing integrated energy systems across multiple energy vectors and end-use sectors, with the aim of supporting a cost-optimised, flexible, and resilient energy system of systems.
Since the previous article ‘Integrated Energy Systems and digital transformation in practice – first findings from ELEXIA’ and eBook, work has continued on the demonstration of the tools and methods, providing more results as well as indications on how to further improve the tools.
A significant development for the consortium in recent months has been the formal acceptance of a six-month project extension. This extension became necessary as some activities planned for the pilot site in Portugal, due to changes in the local boundary conditions, needed to be moved to the site of Promet Plast in Poland (please also see: Pilots — ELEXIA or an interview at the pilot. This site was previously identified as a replication site only.
Testing and further improvement and adaptation of the ELEXIA toolkit continued with activities described below.
ELEXIA toolkit
A comprehensive documentation of the ELEXIA toolkit is currently in development, and information on some of the tools is already available on the project web-page. Also available are fact sheets on some of the components of the ELEXIA system.
For the energy systems optimisation components, fact sheets are available for:
- Predicer (Predictive Decider), which is a tool for optimising energy production and market participation and developed by VTT. The pit thermal energy storage unit located at the interface between the transmission district heating grid of Høje Taastrup and the Copenhagen heat grid is integrated, and the tool is therefore in use at the Danish Pilot.
- SiteOpt, to analyse and optimise future options of integrated energy systems in a local site with several energy vectors and several actors, also developed by VTT. This tool is a planning and optimisation tool for energy systems at the district level and was therefore applied to planning the transformation of the Dokken area of the Norwegian pilot.
- FLEXY, integrating optimisation and prediction tools (based on artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced optimisation algorithms) to maximise the value of flexibility and developed by TECNALIA. The Optiner and Optimarket parts are applied at the Portuguese pilot, and at Promet Plast, the pilot in Poland, Optiener is in use.
Fact sheets for the following forecasting tools can be downloaded:
- SolarFor for forecasting of solar power being a tool of ENFOR, which is in use at the pilot site in Portugal.
- LoadFor is forecasting the electricity load and is also a tool of ENFOR. It is demonstrated and in use in context with the transformation of the Dokken area of the Norwegian pilot site in Bergen, and applied to already existing infrastructure to generate the base for evaluating the potential for additional loads at an existing transformer station or the need for increasing its capacity.
- The ElectricityMaps API is providing real-time, historical, and forecasted carbon intensity and electricity mix data for 190+ countries and regions, which is applied to all pilot sites.
There are also fact sheets for the two tools covering the risk and reliability of integrated energy systems and their components, represented by the following tools:
- ERiSS, a software to assess an energy system’s ability to meet required demand in the event of disruptive risk scenarios. It contributes to energy systems planning by supporting reliability assessment and contingency planning. ERiSS was developed by NORCE and is applied to the Norwegian pilot to evaluate the security of supply for Dokken, considering the various concepts and scenarios of the integrated energy system.
- COREbeat is a solution to convert real-time data into predictive insights, identifying early signs of equipment upcoming needs for service or potential failure before they impact operations. It is a development of CORE and is in operation at the Danish and Norwegian pilot sites for monitoring relevant components of the energy infrastructure.
The documentation of some other tools, like the digital twins developed by DTU, is also in testing at the pilot sites in Denmark and in Norway. Scientific publications on these are already available on the ELEXIA webpage (for example V. Olesen et.al “Grey-box model of a short-term-operated pit thermal energy storage system”; Energy Conversion and Management 367 (2026) 121893 under Deliverables & Publications — ELEXIA). More documentation will be available with the above-mentioned documentation of the ELEXIA system within the coming two months.
Status of the ongoing demonstration activities
Moving activities from Portugal to Poland required the adaptation and preparation of the pilot site for retrieving data as input to the Energy Management Tools and forecasting tools and streaming them into the digital service platform. These preparatory activities were completed during the summer months, and data is streaming from the site to the digital service platform. It is used to train models and to prepare the demonstration of providing input for an improved and optimised operation of the integrated energy system at Promet Plast.
An additional highlight of the recent months was the fact that one replication site is already in the process of preparing its site for the use of ELEXIA tools to optimise the operation of the heating system with various sources. This site also considers direct connection of ELEXIA tools with their SCADA system; ELEXIA is therefore not only providing recommendations for modified operational parameters resulting from optimisation of an integrated energy system, but also directly using the parameters and set-points of the algorithms.
Based on the results evaluating the impact of flexible energy systems and tariffs in the district heating system and the connecting transmission heating grid, an evaluation is in progress on how to implement this flexibility (prices, storage, etc.) in operation. This might unfortunately require some time, as it connects with necessary regulatory adjustments.
Also, the demonstration of the System Planning Tool (SiteOpt) is progressing, including adaptations of the tool, focusing on the user interfaces, their description and instructions. Focus is on the editability of input data and data output of the planning tools. As the tool will be, or might be, used also by non-experts in tool development and energy systems, these two interfaces are under continuous review and improvement, being a result of feedback from users outside the developer group. Besides improving the usability of the typical user interfaces, there is AI-based data input in evaluation. This shall support the automatic modification of input datasets of the planning tools based on very few parameters described by the users, whereas this was done manually and distributed over various input files during tool development.
Similarly, the tool ERiSS to evaluate the security of supply during the planning phase of integrated energy systems is in testing and further adaptation to provide the information as being required by the end users. These adaptations are focused on input parameters as well as the visualisation of the results. The challenge in this context lies in the probabilistic concept of the tool and in the fact that the system allows the simulation of different scenarios. These scenarios can be possible events impacting the system and should be compared with a baseline simulation. As results are probabilistic, their interpretation might require some background knowledge and expertise, while they should be at the same time understandable by non-experts and decision makers.
A relevant outcome is the environmental impact of energy systems from the life cycle analysis done by Durham University for three pilots: the Norwegian, the Danish, and the Portuguese ones. For all three pilots, the baseline case representing the business-as-usual approach was evaluated. The environmental impact of those baseline LCAs was compared with the environmental impact when considering integrated and optimised energy systems. The results clearly show the significant reduction in environmental impact of integrated and optimised energy systems. Publications are in preparation and will be available soon. However, it needs to be mentioned in this context that the adjusted rules and regulations are assumed, as well as the willingness of stakeholders to cooperate across businesses. This might be one of the challenges for harvesting the full potential of integrated energy systems, the utilisation of the flexibility of the systems, components and stakeholders, as the current system focuses on the optimisation of single businesses and preferences. These aspects are evaluated by the social scientists involved in the project and will also be documented via some of the reports and publications of the project.
From technology development to system change
The remaining months will focus on continuing demonstrations at the pilot sites, further adapting the ELEXIA system and its component tools, and consolidating the project’s results through publications, presentations, and conferences. ELEXIA will also present its latest results at KER Congress 2026 with a plenary presentation on the project followed by a dedicated workshop showcasing its tools, pilot demonstrations, and replication activities.
The project activities will continue until the end of March 2027, providing further opportunities to demonstrate how integrated energy-system approaches can contribute to more flexible, resilient, and environmentally efficient energy systems.
Further information, including the ELEXIA toolkit, pilot activities, deliverables and publications, is available on the ELEXIA project website.
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Please note, this article will also appear in the 28th edition of our quarterly publication.
