In this episode of the EU Projects Zone podcast series, Areti Ntaradimou talks to Johannes Slacik about how the eCrew project will support the transition of passive consumers to active participants in the local energy system.

Johannes Slacik, a senior expert in the department of energy economics of the Energy Institute at the JKU Linz, is a project associate for the Horizon 2020 funded eCREW project.

This EU-funded project supports innovators from the smart building value chain through concrete networking and communication actions.

According to Johannes, "With eCrew project we developed an additional business model, namely creating or establishing virtual energy communities that are managed with a collective action entity".

And the project will assist by creating a digital platform which will also show "the tariffs, the energy consumption and how much the consumers can save’ so that everything for the virtual energy communities will become transparent and visible.

To achieve that, eCrew will develop community renewable energy webs allowing households to optimise energy efficiency and reduce expenditures.

In addition, and since the European market is a mix of various countries that have differences in their regulations, Johannes says that "Due to the different regulations and due to the different national settings we do have to adjust the business model sometimes in a minor way and other times actually in a major way which means our business model is actually bound to the platform".

Listen to the whole discussion and find out also Johannes’ vision of the smart communities of the future, as well as how eCrew is going to promote regulation discussions in order to enable energy communities.