Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems
Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems

ODEON

The Horizon Europe project ODEON brings together 34 European organizations to establish an ecosystem for the digital energy transition. ODEON demonstrates and integrates innovative solutions to create an inclusive ecosystem of stakeholders characterized by the integration of a mesh of Data, Intelligence, Service and Market flows in the energy system.

Solar panels and wind turbines generating renewable energy for green and sustainable future.
© iStock / pidjoe

Challenges 

The “Twin Transition” refers to the convergence of digitalization and sustainability. The European Union has set ambitious goals to advance both transformations simultaneously and create synergies, making it essential for the EU energy system to become more flexible and resilient.

A sustainable energy system requires a diverse mix of energy sources and increasingly relies on decentralized energy resources. This decentralization is accompanied by new digital technologies and components, such as smart storage systems and intelligent grids, which allow the integration of electric vehicles and household devices into the smart grid.

The energy market is also becoming more diverse, with a growing number of participants, including independent electricity suppliers. At the edges of the system, this creates new challenges in controllability and operational complexity. Integrating these new market participants and ensuring their services are equally accessible to all potential users is a key task. At the same time, coordination among actors must be enabled, incorporating new digital technologies.

For the market to function effectively for end users and enable seamless participation by all providers, information flows among stakeholders need to be efficiently coordinated. The system must handle large volumes of data, including performance forecasts, operational metrics, and pricing information. A federated data space is therefore required to allow participants to share their data securely while maintaining full control over it.

Solution / Approach

Across Europe, 34 ODEON partners are developing an ecosystem for the digital energy transition. Led by the Spanish company ETRA, they are building a cloud-to-edge data and intelligence service platform, enabling federated energy data spaces and integration of data, intelligence, service, and market flows. The goal is to enable secure and fair data exchange across all actors in the energy value chain, while supporting the flexible development and deployment of data-driven intelligent energy services.

The project provides solutions for managing, provisioning, processing, and sharing energy data in a secure environment. Decentralized and interoperable data “sandboxes” enable trustworthy data exchange while participants retain full sovereignty over their information. ODEON technologies aim to address common barriers and concerns regarding data protection, privacy, cybersecurity, and data silos.

The project develops solutions to ensure grid stability, optimize energy management, and monitor and maintain grid assets. It also offers consumer-focused services, including personalised energy analytics and services that reduce energy consumption in smart homes or optimise bidirectional electric vehicle charging.

A central element of ODEON is an energy data marketplace connecting data providers with demand-side actors. ODEON provides technological mechanisms that enable participants to identify relevant offerings, execute contracts electronically, and exchange data securely.

 

Validation & Demonstrators

Five demonstrators are testing and validating ODEON technologies under real-world conditions in Greece, Spain, France, Denmark, and Ireland, covering both urban and rural areas. The demonstrators involve all key stakeholders in the energy value chain, including producers, distribution grid operators, storage providers, prosumers, and consumers. Various infrastructures/assets, such as power plants, substations, grids, electric vehicles, and buildings, are integrated across different market environments.
 

Key Capabilities of the ODEON Ecosystem:

  • Deployment of DataOps and AIOps across federated infrastructures, including federated ODEON environments, federated energy data spaces, and AI containers in the cloud, near-edge, and edge, enabling the scalable instantiation of multiple services.
  • Collection, monitoring, control, sharing, and analysis of intra- and inter-stakeholder data (in the central ODEON cloud, private clouds/servers, and edge gateways), based on the preferences and infrastructure capacities of energy value chain stakeholders, while considering and optimizing parameters such as latency, connectivity, resource utilization, energy efficiency, localization, and extreme weather events, under AI-enabled orchestration mechanisms.
  • Integration of edge-generated and federated data-driven intelligence into sovereignty-preserving energy services and solutions.

The Digital Public Services division of Fraunhofer FOKUS brings its expertise in data management and is responsible for developing the energy data marketplace, based on piveau, a software developed at Fraunhofer FOKUS for processing, integrating, publishing, and cataloging data.