DuCoop participates in Horizon 2020-programme BRiGHT

Logo Bright

Technological and social aspects of demand response is researched at De Nieuwe Dokken by DuCoop

The BRiGHT project will investigate technological solutions for the implementation of so-called demand response. The social dimension of the project will identify barriers to these solutions and engage consumers
and citizens to help overcome these barriers.

Classic electricity production is based on electricity providers delivering the amount of energy requested by a customer at any point in time. In other words, the demand drives the production. With the increased uptake of
renewable energy technologies, the production of electricity is not always in the hands of the provider. A possible solution for this is to try to steer the electricity demand based on the production at a specific point in time. When a lot of solar power is available for example, a control system can decide to charge electric vehicles at a faster rate. Or when a lot of wind power is produced, heat pumps can be switched on to warm up a well-isolated house, that will stay comfortably warm also when less power is available later on.

This ’demand-response’ approach is something that DuCoop will be testing in the coming years, in collaboration with other BRiGHT project partners such as Imec and Centrica. The focus will be on the charging stations and on the district heating network present at De Nieuwe Dokken. 

In addition to technology development, BRiGHT also includes social research. Working with demand response often requires more interaction with the end consumer, so if it is to be applied on a larger scale, it
is important to know what that end consumer thinks about it. The BRiGHT project even wants to go a step further and actively involve consumers and citizens to help develop demand response strategies that have a
higher chance of succeeding. An initial approach will be to use questionnaires to gather the input of inhabitants of De Nieuwe Dokken.
In the future, we hope to be able to engage more and actively involve our customers so that we can together develop approaches that will make DuCoops energy provision even more future-proof.


Thisproject has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 957816

Co Funded H2020 Horiz En