Educational Kit to advance smart, flexible, and user-centred energy systems

The Educational Kit offers a clear introduction to the concepts, technologies, and real-world practices that enable smart and flexible energy management.

DEDALUS has released its new Educational Kit, a concise yet comprehensive resource designed for students, researchers, and professionals working on residential energy flexibility and user-centred demand response. The kit is available for download on the DEDALUS website.

Developed by Università Politecnica delle Marche, NTUA, CARTIF, and ICONS, the Kit introduces the fundamentals of residential demand response and explains why buildings—responsible for around 40% of Europe’s total energy consumption—play a pivotal role in the

The resource presents the project’s three core services:

• Energy Flexibility Tool (FLEXiT), which forecasts consumption, disaggregates loads, and quantifies flexibility potential

• Comfort Flexibility Service, enabling personalised comfort management during DR events through environmental sensing and machine-learning models

• District-Level Energy Management System, coordinating shared photovoltaics, batteries, and electric vehicle charging to optimise community-level self-consumption

To ground these concepts in real contexts, the Kit includes examples from three DEDALUS pilot sites (Austria, Italy, Greece), illustrating how technical, behavioural, and community-oriented approaches converge in practice. An annex provides an overview of previous EU projects that established the foundations for DEDALUS’ work.

Designed as both an introductory guide and a practical learning tool, the educational kit equips readers to understand—and contribute to—the future of smart, flexible, and inclusive energy systems.

“Educating students on demand response and energy saving is not only about technology—it’s about people, said Gian Marco Revel and Sara Casaccia, who coordinated the academic contribution to the Kit at Università Politecnica delle Marche. “With this kit, we hope to inspire future engineers, researchers, developers, and designers to create digital and innovative solutions that respect both human comfort and our planet’s resources”.

(Photo Credits: UnSplash)