Collaborating with Communities: A Stedin service enabling Local Energy Communities to become their own electricity supplier

The energy grid is transitioning from a centrally controlled demand response system to a decentralized supply response system. There are multiple reasons for this, but the main one is the need to transition to a low carbon energy system to tackle climate change and decrease our dependency on non-renewable energy sources. Next to this consumers become active consumers (prosumers) and increasingly take control over their local (energy) situation. As a result this transition creates a multitude of challenges and demands a re-design of the energy system. Stedin, the Netherlands 3rd largest Distribution System Operator (DSO), set out to find a solution to the challenges posed by the energy transition. The concept they came up with was a design for a Layered Energy System (LES). By running two pilots LES is fully developed and almost ready to be made available for the larger public in the form of a re-branding of LES to Lokaal Energy Flexibel (LEF). However, how LEF should be made available remains unknown. So in order for LEF to be launched to a larger public a new service needs to be designed. A service that sets out to communicate the information which is needed to start your own Local Energy Community (LEC) and collaboratively with Stedin and a service provider of choice set up a LEC. Designing this service is the task set out to solve in this project. One other task is determining what the role of Stedin should be in this process of setting up a LEC. The dilemma is Stedin wants to facilitate LECs and the market but on the other hand should not in turn take over responsibilities of the market. The methodology used to solve the aforementioned problem is service design. A concept service design is made that sets out to help communities explore how to set up a LEC. The design is centered around a community dashboard that shows the current energy situation within a community. All the data found in this dashboard can then also be used in a community configurator to create an ideal design for the local situation and community vision. This design is then communicated to Stedin in the form of a project sketch. Stedin can give feedback or a ‘go’ on the project sketch. This ends the explore phase, after which a LEC can turn to the market for materializing the design. The concept service is communicated with a future service scenario and a service blueprint. Out of this service blueprint the LEF landing page and the community configurator are prototyped and tested with potential users. After testing the solution and direction proved to be in the right direction. However a ‘dumb’ configurator as tested was found challenging for the typical community leader. This result vouches for a more data driven and automated configurator as proposed in the future service scenario. The thesis is concluded with a roadmap for implementation and advice on how to create an MVP as the first step towards implementing the service design.Strategic Product Desig